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Cynthia Phinney is the president of the Maine AFL-CIO, a federation of over 200 unions representing 42,000 workers and retirees in the state of Maine.

Soon after Adolf Hitler was elected to power in 1933, he outlawed Germany’s trade unions. Union offices were ransacked, officials arrested. Some were murdered, others sent to the brand-new Dachau concentration camp. They were quickly joined by Social Democrats, Communists, gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others who opposed the Nazi regime.

Authoritarian regimes — even regimes that claim to represent workers — attack unions. Because unions — workers joined to

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