Workers Speak On the Midterm Electoral Farce

Read our two-part editorial series on the 2026 midterm electoral farce here and here.

Volunteers with The Worker spoke to workers in various cities across the country about their views on the midterm farce. Below are a few responses The Worker received. The responses have been slightly edited for publication.

Construction worker

Life is hard no matter who is in office. Nobody listens to us. I have children, their lives are gonna be even harder. I work construction ten hours a day. I risk my life every day. I spend most of my life at work. Where is all the money going?

Fed-Ex warehouse worker

Voting is not going to change anything because both parties are equally as bad. Even if you vote red, you still not gonna get what you want; even if you vote blue, you still not gonna get what you want.

It is so hard to live. My first week I only made $530 and I blew through it because everything is so expensive.

The cost of living is still going to be super expensive, no matter who is in charge. Unless the people go against what they are trying to put out, nothing is going to change.

Unemployed retail worker

I don’t vote because this economy is fucked up, and the people that we vote for don’t do nothing for us. Right now, me and my children got cut off Medicaid and other benefits for how much I get paid, and that’s not fair. Also, the low-income housing. If you want to do low-income housing, why treat us like shit? Why not help us for real? So we vote for you and then you say you gonna help us and then there’s no fucking help.

These motherfuckers want money. They use us to make more money. They don’t give a fuck about us, they don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t give a fuck about me, they just want to make sure they got money. Look at low-income housing. They say they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do that, but they don’t do shit for them.

[Instead of voting, we should] Stand. Fight together. Be united. Everybody has different problems and different demands. If we don’t demand, they’re not gonna listen to us. And when we do demand, they try to put the cops on us and hurt us. But you know what? We’re gonna still stand strong because when a lot of people come together, the city don’t got that much money to stop us.

Port worker

I think the government’s just awful. They never look out for anyone. They say they’re for the middle class, they’re never for the middle class. They just help out the people at the top, help out their friends, help out anyone that pays them at the end of the day, and we get fucked at the end of the day. That’s all. That’s the truth. I refused to register to vote, because I don’t believe any government official would represent me in any certain type of way. They say it, but their actions don’t speak to their words. That’s all it is at the end of the day.

Amazon delivery driver

I don’t care about the election. No matter who we pick, even if we pick Trump or whoever we choose, it’s still going to be some bullshit; it’s not going to have nothing to do with all this that is going on. They are still going to do the exact same shit no matter what president they get. Nothing is going to change. They up the wages $1 but up gas and everything else. Yeah we get a $1 raise but now they are giving us hundreds of more packages.

City worker

I’m not voting because it provides no leverage for working class people. People, often particularly liberals or people who think they’re radical or socialists, will tout voting as a tool but voting is nothing without organizing your community. When SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] was in Alabama and Mississippi, the first thing they did was to get the community power and some kind of leverage while simultaneously getting them to the ballots. People often say, “Oh well your people died so that you could vote”—no, people died to get power. And voting at the time was one of the things that they were barred from doing. And they fought for people to vote so that no one can tell them where to go and how to determine their lives. Voting wasn’t the end all be all. When SNCC organized with the original Black Panther Party and with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with Fannie Lou Hamer, what they were doing was leveraging power. They were organizing those communities. They were using the vote as a means to actually organize the communities. Nowadays, it’s backwards.

Manufacturing worker

Monopolies and CEOs—they’re the top guns because they can buy votes. They can buy politicians. Elon Musk was able to influence the election because of his wealth. I think right now the workers are the last thing on their minds. We definitely need to band together because I feel like with AI [artificial intelligence] they’ll try to replace as many people as possible. I don’t think we have any systems in place for all those people that’s going to be out of work. Job security is looking pretty scarce. On top of that, some people’s benefits are tied to their job. If they were to lose their jobs or leave their jobs, now they would have to foot the bill themselves. They’re not gonna be able to. I would say that the average worker is definitely stressed.

Port worker

[The elections are] a lot of empty promises, telling you that they’re going to put a lot of taxes down, but nothing ends up happening. I wouldn’t mind paying taxes if you actually knew where it went to. You have a breakdown at everything. Because obviously you see, like Philadelphia, there’s no schools, and everything else is like that. It’s not looking good. So it’s like, where’s it really going to? Potholes all in the road, it makes no sense. That’s what I think.

I think the number one priority is the workers.

You have a vote and everything. But at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s going to matter. They’re going to put whoever they want to put in. And they’re going to go with that agenda, even if it’s not the agenda you want. It’s all a bunch of facade. That’s really what it is. You think they’re for you, but they’re not for you. Not at all.

Image: Construction workers in Boulder, Colorado, 2014. Credit: SparkFun Electronics on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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