Open Letter to the Congress of the United States
U.S. Workers Alliance
From: Buildup Cooperative dba US Workers Alliance
To: The Members of the United States Congress
Date: March 26, 2026
Re: A Respectful Notice That the Current Arrangement Has Failed
Dear Members of Congress,
We write to you with respect for the offices you hold and the responsibilities entrusted to you by the American people. We write not as adversaries, but as citizens who have reached a point of difficult clarity. What we have to say is not delivered in anger, though anger would be justified. It is delivered in sorrow, though sorrow will not slow us.
We believe, based on considerable evidence, that the institution you serve in has become functionally incapable of addressing the most basic needs of the American worker. This is not a statement about any individual member, nor about any particular party. It is a structural observation, and it leads us to a conclusion we did not reach lightly: the current arrangement by which working Americans seek redress through their elected representatives has come to an end.
We say this carefully. We say it politely. And we mean it completely.
The Situation on the Ground
We have spent considerable time documenting the lived experience of American workers. What we have found is a population living in a state of chronic, low-grade emergency—a condition that has become so normalized that it no longer registers as a crisis, even though it is one.
Workers wake up every morning with a knot in their stomach. They perform unpaid labor simply to get to jobs that do not pay enough to cover the cost of getting there. They train their own supervisors. They watch coworkers being terminated for the sin of asking for enough to live on. They make themselves small and invisible because visibility is dangerous in a system where employment is “at-will” and power is concentrated entirely on one side of the table.
They cannot ask for raises. They cannot demand safe conditions. They cannot organize without facing retaliation that destroys careers and families. And they have nowhere else to go—because every available job offers the same insufficient wages, the same unpredictable schedules, the same structural power imbalance.
These are not isolated stories. These are not anecdotes. This is the daily reality for tens of millions of your constituents.
What We Have Observed About Congress
We have observed that Congress has not meaningfully addressed this situation in decades. The federal minimum wage has not risen since 2009. The protections for organizing have been weakened rather than strengthened. The tax code, the trade agreements, the regulatory framework—all have trended in one direction: toward the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands, and away from the workers who create that wealth.
We have observed that when legislation is proposed to address worker concerns, it dies in committee, or is stripped of meaningful provisions, or is never brought to a vote. We have observed that corporate lobbying outspends labor lobbying by ratios that make a mockery of representative democracy. We have observed that the same industries that profit from worker precarity maintain robust access to your offices, while the workers themselves are reduced to petitions that receive form-letter responses.
We have observed, in short, a system that is working exactly as designed—but not for the people it was ostensibly designed to serve.
This is not a criticism of your individual character. Many of you entered public service with genuine hopes of making a difference. But the institution you serve in has become structurally incapable of serving workers, and we believe it is time to acknowledge this honestly.
The Donor Problem
We recognize the position you are in. Each of you, regardless of party, depends on campaign contributions to remain in office. Those contributions come overwhelmingly from the donor class—corporations, wealthy individuals, and the institutions that represent concentrated wealth. The American worker is not represented in your donor base. The American worker cannot write the checks that fund your campaigns.
This creates a structural reality that no amount of personal goodwill can overcome. When your political survival depends on people who profit from worker precarity, you cannot meaningfully advocate against that precarity. When your access to office runs through donors who benefit from low wages, weak unions, and minimal regulation, you cannot deliver high wages, strong unions, or meaningful regulation.
We are not accusing you of corruption. We are describing a system of incentives. You are not bad people operating within a good system. You are people—some good, some less so—operating within a system that structurally prevents you from serving the workers you claim to represent.
This is why nothing gets done. It is not gridlock. It is not partisanship. It is not a failure of will or communication. It is a system working exactly as designed—to serve the people who pay for it, which is not the American worker.
The One Thing We Ask
We are asking for one thing only:
Enforce the laws already on the books.
The Department of Labor, the NLRB, and the FEC are underfunded and understaffed. Violations go unpunished because there is no one to punish them. Fund enforcement at levels that match the scale of the problem.
That is all. We are not asking for new legislation. We are not asking for new programs. We are asking you to do the bare minimum: ensure that existing labor and election laws are actually enforced.
We do not expect you to do this. The same donor class that funds your campaigns profits from weak enforcement. But we are asking, for the record, so that when workers ask what could be done, there is an answer—and so that when history judges this era, there is a record of what was refused.
Why We Are Telling You This
We are telling you this because we believe in transparency. We are telling you because the polite fiction—that Congress is working on behalf of all Americans—has become harmful. It sustains a false hope that distracts from the hard work of building real power.
Workers have been told, for generations, to wait. To be patient. To trust the process. To vote, to call their representatives, to participate in a system that was built for them in theory but has been captured against them in practice.
We are no longer asking workers to wait. We are no longer directing their energy toward an institution that has demonstrated, over and over, that it cannot or will not help them.
What Comes Next
We are building a political force that will replace you.
We are not organizing to petition you. We are organizing to outlast, outvote, and ultimately outseat you. The donor class that funds your campaigns does not have enough votes to keep you in office when workers organize as a voting bloc. They have money. We have numbers. And we are learning to use them.
This is not a threat. It is a statement of intent. Workers are coming to understand the system they live under. They are recognizing that representation requires more than votes—it requires representatives who are structurally capable of representing them. And they are building the power to elect those representatives.
You Should Resign
If you recognize that you cannot serve workers while remaining dependent on the donor class, there is an honorable option: resign.
Make room for representatives who are not captured. Make room for a politics that serves the people instead of the funders.
We do not expect you to take this option. But it is available to you, and history will judge those who stayed when they knew they could not serve.
Our Respectful Conclusion
The current arrangement has failed. Workers cannot wait any longer. Congress cannot, or will not, or may not—depending on the member and the moment—deliver even the bare minimum of enforcement. We have reached the end of the road that leads through your institution.
We do not do this with hostility. We do not do this with contempt for the individuals who serve in Congress, many of whom we believe genuinely wish to help. We do this because the evidence has compelled us to conclude that meaningful help will not come from Congress, and honesty requires us to say so.
The usefulness of Congress to the American worker—as currently constituted, as currently funded, as currently functioning—has come to an end.
We say this carefully. We say this politely. And we mean it completely.
You represent the donor class. The donor class profits from worker precarity. And workers are done pretending otherwise.
Respectfully submitted,
Randell S. Hynes
Founder and President
Buildup Cooperative dba US Workers Alliance
This letter is accompanied by supporting documentation including:
- SCOTUS Petition for a 28th Amendment (challenging corporate personhood and money-as-speech doctrines)
- Worker testimony collected through USWA’s storytelling platform
Contact:
[Address]
[City, State, ZIP]
[Email]
[Phone]
cc: The American People
