Face it, Democrats: Not all unions are allies

Lost in the deluge of campaign coverage these days is any meaningful coverage of one of the Biden administration’s signal achievements. 

Less than a year ago, the president made history by walking a United Auto Workers (UAW) picket line demanding that General Motors give the nation’s blue-collar workers a raise. The union’s president, Shawn Fain, declared at the time, “We know the president will do right by the working class.” 

When the UAW prevailed, anyone paying attention could see the outlines of the old progressive coalition emerging through a political fog — the Democratic Party, organized labor and working-class voters all rowing in the same direction.

As someone who cut his teeth working for Mister Union himself, former Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), I understand that keeping that coalition together is not easy. For long stretches of American history, Republicans, aligned with fashionably suited corporate executives, could make no serious claim to be the party of the working class. 

But that’s changed of late. Why? Part of the reason is MAGA’s cultural appeal, and figures like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) steering Republicans away from its old “of the corporate boardroom” appeal. 

But a big reason is that some union brass are determined to undermine their alliance with Democrats. Unfortunately, too many in the party appear blind to that reality — and, more importantly, to its implications for working Americans.

Take, as a case in point, the Teamsters. Unlike the UAW’s Shawn Fain, Teamster President Sean O’Brien is throwing his lot in with former President Donald Trump, and not in a quiet way. O’Brien has explicitly asked to speak at the GOP convention in Milwaukee. 

Far be it from me to tell O’Brien what to do — perhaps the rides he’s presumably been promised on Air Force One will be worth the carnage a second Trump administration will do to working-class interests. Perhaps he’ll cheer when Trump cuts taxes for the rich and sparks tariff-induced inflation. Perhaps he’ll snicker when working-class families are thrown off of Medicaid and Obamacare, and everything sold at Walmart and Target becomes more expensive almost overnight.

I can’t entirely explain his thinking. But I can certainly question why my fellow Democrats would do his bidding on Capitol Hill. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. O’Brien is not only speaking but also funding the Trump insanity.

For some Democrats, the nuance here may seem entirely academic, unworthy of their attention. To their thinking, a union is a union is a union. But, in fact, from a purely policy-oriented perspective, the distinction makes a world’s worth of difference. 

It makes little political sense for Democrats to boost figures like O’Brien, not because it’s a mistake to organize labor, but because the Teamsters, unlike the UAW, are working to undermine the movement’s agenda. 

To enact a truly pro-union, pro-labor agenda — to restore organized labor to the hallowed role it once played to protect America’s working class from losing the opportunity to seize the American Dream — figures like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) will have to distinguish between real allies and progressive pretenders. They have already given O’Brien all the airtime they could.

There are plenty of incredible, solid labor leaders who aren’t out to destroy American jobs and the American way that these senators could embrace.

This isn’t the first time Democrats have been compelled to see through a strange bedfellows moment. For years, many of the nation’s leading abortion rights groups bent over backward to support pro-abortion rights Republicans, believing that it behooved them to make political inroads across the aisle. 

What they undervalued was that any pro-choice Republican, once elected, was going to vote for a speaker or Senate majority leader who was almost invariably opposed to abortion. The groups were undermining their own mission because the immediate satisfaction of electing a Republican who supported abortion rights elevated their political adversaries. 

With Dobbs, we saw how that strategy turned out.

Today, Democrats face a similar dilemma as they try to champion a working-class agenda. Some unions want to row with us — their success is ours, and our triumphs serve their interests. They are true allies. But that’s not universally among the great diversity of unions. 

Sean O’Brien may seek to come off as a blue-collar champion, but his politics only undermine blue-collar interests. Democrats should stand with organized labor, as Biden did with the UAW. But when they do, they need to be sure those unions will stand with the working class. 

To build a movement, everyone will need to be a team player. To pursue a working-class agenda, Democrats need to reserve their support for those who help them build a sustainable majority.

Lindsay Mark Lewis is the executive director and a board member of the Progressive Policy Institute.