Listen: Republicans Do Not Want Unions to Exist

A basic but vital point.

Smile! (Photo: Getty)

If there were a button that you could push that would eliminate the existence of every labor union in America, the Republican Party would push that button. If it were possible to pass a bill that outlawed labor union membership in America, and if it were possible to pass that bill without a political backlash that might cause them to lose their next election, virtually every state and federal Republican politician of note would vote for it. I feel the need to make sure that anyone who reads this publication understands this fact. It’s hard to get a good grasp on “labor and politics in America” without this baseline understanding.

I (and many others) have written before about How The “Working Class Republican” Scam Works and about all of the ways that the Republican effort of late to present themselves as some sort of pro-worker party is just a big cup of piss. I say this not because I am trying to make some argument that the Democratic Party is fantastic—indeed, the Democrats sometimes offer us only a slightly warmer cup of piss—but because I see a frankly alarming tendency among too many well-intentioned people to give certain elements of the Republican Party a benefit of the doubt that they do not deserve.

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Once you understand that unions are a fundamental right and a necessity for American workers if we ever hope to roll back 50 years of rising inequality, and once you understand that union power has been systematically crushed by capitalism since the end of WW2, and if you are interested in the prospect of reviving the power of organized labor, you must understand that the project of labor unions (to increase worker power, and equality) is diametrically opposed to the project of the Republican Party (to protect the interests of the rich, and business). Yes, there will be specific instances, specific issues, where stars will align and allow certain Republicans to vote with unions on certain things. But please, I beg you, recognize always that support for the Republican Party is the equivalent of opposition to the interests of organized labor, and by extension the working class, because the Republican Party would, if it was possible, prefer to see no unions anywhere doing anything for anyone.

To list every example that demonstrates this basic fact would take volumes—in general, it is enough to know that Republicans as a bloc do not support the PRO Act, the big labor law reform bill that would go a long way towards rebuilding union power in this country, and they do support all of the aggressively anti-union measures like “Right to Work” laws that the PRO Act is trying to do away with. When you brush away all the words that politicians say and look at the policies that they do or do not support, these things become pretty simple. When I was covering the National Conservatism Conference earlier this year, there was a panel all about the new and exciting Pro Worker strain of Republicanism. On that panel was Riley Moore, the state treasurer of West Virginia. As an example of his union-friendly bona fides, Moore said that he was against imposing a federal “right to work” law. When pressed, he said that he did, however, support West Virginia’s “right to work” law. In other words, where he had the power to do something, he was anti-union, and where he had no power and was free to take any position, he posed as pro-union. This approach of “I will personally punch you in the face, but I don’t think everyone else should be automatically required to punch you in the face as well” is emblematic of the Republican Party’s definition of being friendly to the working class.

Let me touch on one specific ongoing example of Republican policy towards unions that has not been getting enough attention. In 2023, Ron Desantis—the man who was a near-consensus pick for Republican presidential nominee among the party’s pundit class only a year and a half ago!—signed a law in Florida that created onerous bureaucratic requirements for public sector unions, ended their ability to automatically deduct union dues from member paychecks, and, most harmfully, mandated an automatic decertification vote for unions that could not demonstrate a 60% membership rate each year. It is already hard for unions to build and maintain membership in “right to work” states. Desantis made it harder to do so, and harder to collect dues, and then at the same time said “well if you can’t show a high membership rate we’re gonna abolish the union altogether.” Instead of just doing the work of the union, which is difficult enough, unions must spend huge amounts of time meeting these new requirements to show that they should be allowed to continue to exist, every year. It is a Kafka-style way to inundate overstressed unions with paperwork tasks, and then, if they cannot keep up with the paperwork tasks, wipe them out of existence. It is about as plain an anti-worker measure as you can find anywhere. And yes, he exempted the cop and firefighter unions, who tend to support Republicans, just in case you had any suspicion that the bill was not a dishonest hypocritical piece of shit.

Learn to smile you clown.

Can you guess how much damage this bill has already done? The best coverage of this issue has come from McKenna Schueler at Orlando Weekly, who is (as far as I am aware, please correct me if I’m wrong) the only full time labor reporter in Florida, and whose work you should all be following. Schueler reports that, since the bill was signed last year, “more than 68,000 public employees in Florida have lost their union representation - NOT because they voted to get rid of their unions, but because their union had low membership and didn't petition for a recertification election.” More than SIXTY EIGHT THOUSAND union members evaporated in a little over a single year. How bad is that? Well, as of 2023, there were 578,000 workers represented by unions in the state of Florida, barely 6% of the total work force. Republicans in Florida have succeeded in wiping out 12% of Florida’s total union membership in sixteen months. This is horrifying. This is a crisis for the labor movement—not just in Florida, but nationally. All of this from a single bill that did not explicitly outlaw unions, but instead created a set of requirements that are incredibly difficult to meet in order for unions to continue to exist. Awful, horrific damage done to tens of thousands of workers and their extended families and communities, combined with a veneer of deniability that will allow Republicans to shrug and claim that this is not precisely what they were aiming to accomplish. Truly, a scumbag move by a group of scumbags.

This is a good example of the methods that Republicans use to undermine worker power. If you ask them they will say, “We believe in the rights of working people, we simply want unions to be accountable, we want working people to have free choice, blah blah blah.” And then they write a set of rules that make the game impossible to win. “We would never push that button wiping unions off the map!” they say, while signing the “Decertification For All Unions Whose Eyes Water When Onions Are Cut” bill.

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Republicans hate unions and by extension hate the working class and when they tell you different they are lying to you. Please internalize this fact.

The labor movement is desperate for resources to devote to organizing new union members. There is a limited pool of resources to tap for this purpose. Organized labor is at all times in a war against the power of capital and all of the politicians that capital owns. So it is galling and extremely wrongheaded when, for example, progressive foundations give money to allegedly “pro worker” right wing groups like American Compass, on the theory that they are helping to build some sort of left-right pro-labor coalition. There is no such coalition. American Compass is a group that says, “We are advocating labor policy that is mildly more friendly than that of the median Republican.” Yet that policy is still not good labor policy. If you want to give money, give it to the labor movement. (Or, for that matter, to me and my fellow labor journalists. We all make a lot less than Oren fucking Cass.)

We are in a fight! Organized labor is in a fight! Don’t give money to the other side! This is very simple! You cannot triangulate your way out of the fact that the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of capital and will therefore never, ever, ever acquiesce to the existence of a strong labor movement. There is a song… what’s it called? “Which Side Are You On.” Yeah. Look it up. It is not called “Watch Us Build a Coalition With Moderate Elements of the Coal Industry Who Are More Reasonable Than Sheriff J.H. Blair.”

That is not how the world works.

I apologize for writing something so elementary today, but this seems to be a lesson that does not quite penetrate into wider political consciousness, and it causes us to waste a lot of time. Contributing money or support to the Republican Party is and will continue to be bad for unions, because the stronger the Republican Party gets, the more they will push towards their ultimate preference of abolishing unions altogether. The Democratic Party fucking sucks in a million ways but they do not want to eradicate unions and that is why the Democratic Party is the arena where unions carry out productive politicking. If any genuine “pro-worker Republicans” existed, the first thing they would do would be to leave the Republican Party. I’m waiting.

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“The Hammer” Book Tour

If you enjoy stridently arguing about the labor movement, you would probably like my book “The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor,” which is available for purchase wherever books are sold. I have a few more book tour events coming up in September. Come out and see me if I am in your area! I will sign your book and you can argue with me in person, if you like. Upcoming events:

• Wednesday, September 25: St. Augustine, Florida. I’ll be speaking at Flagler College at the Ringhaver/ Gamache-Kroger Theatre at 7 pm.

• Thursday, September 26: Gainesville, Florida. At The Lynx Books at 6 pm. In conversation with labor activist Candi Churchill. Event link here.

• Sunday, September 29: Brooklyn, NY. At the Brooklyn Book Festival—3 pm at 250 Joralemon Street. With Astra Taylor, Deepak Bhargava, and Max Alvarez. Event link here.

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More

• Related reading: You Patsy; How the “Working Class Republican” Scam Works; Onward, Christian Soldiers—To War!

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  Are you looking for a legitimate, no-bullshit way to help the labor movement? Here’s one: support the Emergency Worker Organizing Committee (EWOC), which provides any interested worker access to union organizers. EWOC is a great project that offers a necessary service and it gets results. This month, EWOC is in search of 150 sustaining donors to help them keep going for another year. I do not spend a lot of time endorsing nonprofit groups here, but I endorse EWOC. If you can afford to give even $5 a month to support them, follow this link right here. Doing so will make you a good person—much better than Republicans, who are bad.

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