Do Labor Leaders Not Know What Workers Want, or Do They Just Not Care?

And creative paths forward like, say, reversing Citizens United…

On Thursday night I found myself deep in conversation with the communications director for the UAW, Jonah Furman, which isn’t the sort of thing I’d ordinarily write about. But it happened on Twitter so, well, you can see for yourself. As a microcosm of everything wrong with the American labor movement, his comments are a helpful starting place this Labor Day.

Our conversation began after I highlighted a call from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades for a “ceasefire in Gaza” and for “the federal government to stop funding the genocide.”  and an end to the genocide that’s going on right now in Palestine.” When I suggest unions should focus on representing workers and stay out of politics, I get lectured that a labor movement must exercise political power to advance economic interests. But I'm still not entirely clear, I said, on how painters benefit from accusing Israel of genocide?

Such a comment, said Furman, was “the ‘shut up and dribble’ of the labor movement.”

But that’s not right. Indeed, its mistake is the fundamental flaw at the modern American labor movement’s foundation. “Shut up and dribble” was a comment made by Fox News host Laura Ingraham in response to political comments by NBA superstar LeBron James. The message was that an individual athlete should keep his personal opinions to himself. Many people understandably disagreed.

As Furman’s comment suggests, union leaders see themselves as the NBA superstars of the labor movement, entitled to use their platforms to disseminate their personal opinions. But they are not. A union exists to represent the members; it is in their interests that the leaders must act. Furman insisted that union leaders “make collective decisions so as to represent their members views,” but of course that’s not actually true. When I asked him whether he had any survey data about his members’ views on political issues, he responded, “does your thinktank direct poll every billionaire who funds it on what tweets you should do?”

And there again is the category error. This time, his analogy positions union leadership as proudly and rightfully developing a point of view independent of its members’ preferences, just as an effective think tank acts independently of its donors’ views. Think tanks don’t poll donors on what to say, therefore union leaders shouldn’t poll their members on what to say?! It speaks to a sickness in the Big Labor mindset and helps explain the institution’s deep rot.

Many others then joined the discussion but, remarkably, no one could point to any empirical data supporting the idea that workers want their unions engaging on national political issues at all, let alone taking the uniformly—and often radically—progressive positions their leaders always seem to adopt. Deploying a variation on I’m-rubber-you’re-glue, Hamilton Nolan, a prominent labor activist and writer, suggested, “American Compass should use its money to hire union organizers and organize workers into unions that are run as direct democracies. We would all support you in this.”

But the funny thing is, unlike the unions whose fundamental obligation is to represent workers effectively, we have taken the time at American Compass to survey thousands of workers on their views of what unions should do. And what we have found is that the political activism pursued by union leaders directly contradicts the preferences of most workers. And, importantly, that activism makes harder the basic task of organizing unions and building worker power in the first place.

By nearly two-to-one, and nearly three-to-one amongst potential union members, workers say they would prefer to be a member of an organization that focused on “workplace issues only,” not “national politics and workplace issues.”

Among workers who say they would vote against a union in their workplace, “union political involvement” is the reason most often cited.

Asked which activities are most and least important for a worker organization, workers assign politics and social activism by far the least weight. For more than three-quarters of respondents, the ideal weight assigned to politics was zero. Most assigned zero weight to social activism.

I shared this data on Twitter as well, genuinely curious whether anyone in the labor movement either had broad public opinion surveys contradicting the findings or knew of efforts within particular unions to elicit a genuine sense of member preferences. Apparently not. Of course, I suspect plenty of internal survey data exists—it would be malpractice for the leadership in any large organization not to take solicit such input—but unions are not eager to share anything in public. If they had evidence that they do indeed speak for their members, it would be entirely in their interest to share it, as it would bolster their credibility and influence. The silence speaks volumes.

A CONSERVATIVE LABOR MOVEMENT

The failure goes well beyond just wasting resources and alienating workers with progressive political posturing. It culminates in a perverted conception of what it even means to be “pro-worker.” A great example of this emerged recently in the presidential campaign, with Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz saying that his GOP counterpart, Senator JD Vance, “never cast a vote on a pro-worker bill in his life.”

Governor Walz’s basis for that claim was a “scorecard” published by the AFL-CIO. But the two votes that the AFL-CIO had scored as “pro-worker,” and on which Vance had allegedly taken the wrong side, were not about work. They were standard progressive fare—one concerned student debt forgiveness, the other funded voter registration. Vance is the co-sponsor of the Higher Wages for American Workers Act, which raises the federal minimum wage by 50% and mandates use of the E-Verify system to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants. You’d think the AFL-CIO would be pounding the table for that! Of course they’re not, because it isn’t popular in the Democratic Party, of which Big Labor is now an appendage.

As I argued in a New York Times essay on Friday:

The casual conflation of [union leaders’] own interests with those of workers misunderstands what workers want and what pro-worker policy can look like. If the goal is to place workers on a level playing field with employers so that they can advocate their own interests effectively and share fully in the prosperity they help to create, then getting more workers into those unions is not the only way. It’s not even the best way.

A more effective strategy is to ensure a tight labor market by constraining who employers can hire — in particular, by making it harder to offshore production to other countries or bring workers from other countries into the United States. Employers fight against such constraint tooth and nail because it forces them to improve the quality of the jobs they offer, to retain workers and draw people off the sidelines to fill open positions, and to invest in boosting productivity.

…

Nor is America’s existing union model, codified by the Depression-era National Labor Relations Act, the only form a vibrant labor movement might take. In most of Europe, for instance, unions operate at the industry level rather than having to fight for recognition company by company. Within individual firms, rather than face off across a negotiating table, labor and management are more likely to establish joint “works councils,” through which the sides collaborate on solving workplace problems and improving operations. Under the N.L.R.A., such cooperative arrangements are significantly restricted, and unions want to keep it that way, even though workers repeatedly say they would prefer worker organizations “run jointly by employees and management.”

In the epistemic bubble shared by labor leaders and progressive Democrats (I repeat myself), none of that is “pro-worker” because “pro-worker” is just a euphemism for whatever the bubble’s inhabitants happen to want. Maybe that seems uncharitable. But it is hard to be charitable in the face of an argument that the Union of Painters needs to be accusing Israel of genocide because “painters benefit from ending a war that’s killing lots of painters,” to quote former Bernie Sanders advisor Matt Duss. The sophistry fools no one, least of all workers, who join private-sector unions at a lower rate today than before passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 established their organizing rights.

Still, as I have long argued, conservatives err when they simply cheer from the sidelines for the labor movement’s demise. I wrote several Labor Days ago in the Wall Street Journal that:

“Conservative labor” might sound like an oxymoron, but America’s dysfunctional labor unions, creatures of Great Depression-era legislation and decades of political polarization, are neither inevitable nor typical of their counterparts elsewhere.

Concern for worker power and representation is as old as the discipline of economics. “Upon all ordinary occasions,” warned Adam Smith, employers “have the advantage in the dispute, and force [workmen] into a compliance with their terms.” John Stuart Mill, a favorite of modern libertarians, lamented that without sufficient union strength, “the laborer in an isolated condition, unable to hold out even against a single employer…will, as a rule, find his wages kept down.” He condemned those who did not “wish that the laborers may prevail, and that the highest limit [for wages], whatever it be, may be attained.” Conservative social analysts have long celebrated the role of unions in free societies. The eminent sociologist Robert Nisbet declared unions “the true supports of economic freedom.”

…

Rising corporate profits don’t lift workers’ boats on their own, nor will workers patiently take on water forever. The response favored by the left is to create more and larger programs of government redistribution and regulation. A better alternative would be to revitalize an institution capable of helping workers claim for themselves a genuine seat at the table and a larger share of the economy’s gains.

HOW WOULD THIS LOOK IN PRACTICE?

Glad you asked! The last item I wanted to highlight here today is my new essay in the Economic Innovation Group’s American Worker Project, on “Rebuilding Worker Power.” There I describe the economic as well as political dysfunctions of the modern American system of organized labor, propose constructive alternatives, and map pathways from here to there. Three ideas that I would highlight in particular:

1. Unbundling Politics

The simplest reform would unbundle the political and economic functions of unions, as former SEIU lawyer and current Harvard professor Benjamin Sachs has proposed. No reason exists that the worker organizations codified by the NLRA to bargain with employers should also be the worker organizations that fund political campaigns. Prohibiting unions from engaging in electoral politics—for instance, with restrictions similar to those imposed upon tax-exempt non-profits—would immediately make them more attractive to workers and a cause more palatable for Republicans to join Democrats in supporting.

One politically viable path might be to pair this reform with a legislative effort to reverse Citizens United and restrict corporate political spending. Senator Hawley has already introduced legislation to do the latter. Lawrence Mishel, long-time president of the labor-aligned Economic Policy Institute, has suggested he would take that deal.

2. Joint Labor-Management Committees

Another promising approach would seek to create new forms of less adversarial worker representation, along the lines of the collaborative works councils popular in Germany. The NLRA prohibits such efforts on the theory that employers would use them to co-opt organizing energy and short-circuit efforts at forming full-fledged unions. But in a world where so few private-sector workers are organized and most say they would actively prefer this alternative model, it should at least be offered as an option.

An innovative proposal from Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Jim Banks would eliminate the prohibition on works councils and establish a framework for employers and workers to partner in creating them, while also mandating that an employer going this route must also allow a worker representative on the board of directors.

3. Sectoral Bargaining

Innovative policymakers should look for opportunities to experiment with [sectoral bargaining] in specific jurisdictions and industries. An ideal configuration might be a conservative governor or mayor partnering with an industry lamenting “labor shortages” or a “skills gap” and a union that has never made in-roads organizing there before, to establish a local labor organization and trade group authorized to negotiate terms that would be codified industry-wide. Think “Nashville hotel staff” or “Indiana truck drivers.”

Many variables require specification: Who controls the organizations and how is their legitimacy validated by the workers and employers represented? What terms and conditions are subject to negotiation and what happens when agreement cannot be reached? What other activities would the labor organization be encouraged to carry out, funded by whom, and what activities would be proscribed? Some arrangements would likely collapse, but others would succeed and could be replicated: same jurisdiction with a new industry, or same industry in a new jurisdiction.

If there is good news about a labor movement that has been driven off the rails by partisan progressive leadership unmoored from the interests of workers, it is that the opportunities for improvement abound. And insofar as both political parties profess genuine interest in pursuing pro-worker policies, the prospects for progress are real.

Oren