Labor unions

In These Times - The 2024 election made one thing unmistakably clear: organized labor is no longer the unshakable pillar of the Democratic Party coalition that it once was. According to a new report from the Center for Working-Class Politics, Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy, and Jacobin, titled ?“Can Unions Make a Difference?,” more than 40% of union members voted for Trump in 2024. The Democratic coalition has been fracturing across class lines for the last decade — a process known as class dealignment — and that divide is only growing.

The issue isn’t that workers don’t trust unions — 70% of Americans approve of them, the highest approval rating in over 50 years. It’s that they don’t trust politicians. Rather than rebranding, the solution for Democrats is clear: embrace the party’s roots in a concrete way by putting union leaders on the ballot.

At a time when trust in all kinds of institutions — political, business, economic — is collapsing, labor unions stand out with a singular kind of public approval that could be leveraged into real electoral influence. To the American people, unions are a counteragent to the political machine — an institution, yes, but one of the few that people can actually get behind. Despite this, most unions vastly underuse their electoral position, opting to simply donate to incumbents or candidates whose victories look inevitable.

The study found that candidates with union backgrounds use 159% more pro-worker language and 66% more progressive economic language, prioritizing a pro-worker, economic populist agenda. Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), a former industrial electrician, has experience catching language in bills that could hurt workers’ needs: