Throughout 2024, a great deal of attention has rightfully been placed on the presidential election, from the political drama of the summer to the implications of the election on vital issues like abortion, climate change, and the wars in Palestine, Lebanon, and Ukraine. To me, however, one of the most important questions of this election is what it means for labor. Not just on government policies toward labor, but also on the political strategy followed by the labor movement.
Recent years have seen a dramatic upsurge in labor activity. Public approval of labor unions is at its highest since the 1960s. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reports that, from 2021 to 2024, the number of union petitions (filed by workers seeking to organize a union) has doubled. Starbucks Workers United recently unionized its 500th store and appears to be close to ratifying a collective bargaining agreement for its thousands of members. A Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga voted to unionize in 2024, the first auto factory in the South to unionize since the 1940s.
Many existing unions have also grown more militant. For example, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the United Auto Workers (UAW) have launched audacious organizing campaigns in previously unthinkable territory—for the IBT, organizing Amazon workers, and for the UAW, organizing autoworkers in the South. The IBT won significant pay and safety improvements in its 2023 contract with UPS, and the UAW won historic concessions from the Big Three auto manufacturers (GM, Ford, and Stellantis) after its Stand Up Strike in 2023. Rail workers and dockworkers have made high-profile strike threats, and Boeing workers recently defied their union leaders to stay on strike to win back their pensions.
Labor is certainly having a moment. But it remains to be seen whether it can translate into a sustained turnaround in labor’s fortunes. After all, despite exciting organizing victories, the overall number of unionized workers has continued its slow decline. In the 1960s, around a third of American workers were unionized. Today, barely 10% of the American workforce is unionized, and less than 7% in the private sector.
The 2024 election may decide the direction that labor takes. For one, it could determine the shape of labor law.
The NLRB, whose members are appointed by the president, has a great deal of discretion to make organizing easier or harder. Under President Biden, the Board has taken the former course. The Board has, for instance, issued orders for employers to recognize unions if the employers commit unfair labor practices, temporary injunctions reinstating workers fired for union activities, and rules expanding the definition of “employees” covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
Labor law is not the sole reason for the recent upsurge in labor activity, of course. One can easily date labor’s upsurge back to the teachers’ strikes of 2018, which, in many cases, were outright illegal. But the NLRB has played a crucial role in creating the space for workers to exercise their rights.
Furthermore, while the chances are slim, a Democratic victory could lead to the passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (“the PRO Act”), which would be the most significant labor law reform since the 1940s. The PRO Act would amend some of the most noxious aspects of American labor law. It would ban captive audience meetings, where employers subject workers to hours of mandatory anti-union propaganda. It would prevent employers from replacing striking workers. It would enhance penalties for committing unfair labor practices, which are, currently, mostly limited to requiring employers to post notices. While the Biden Administration fell a few votes short in the Senate of passing the PRO Act in 2021, if Kamala Harris wins the White House and Democrats take back Congress, the PRO Act may be back on the table in 2025.
A Trump victory would have equally dramatic consequences. A second Trump NLRB would reverse the pro-labor policies of the Biden NLRB. Additionally, Trump’s judicial appointees could roll back what slim protections are left under the NLRA. The Supreme Court (which currently includes three Trump appointees) recently curtailed the Board’s injunctive remedies. With four more years of Trump appointments to the federal judiciary, the NLRB could be further paralyzed. Indeed, the NLRA itself could be at risk—several challenges to the constitutionality of the NLRA are currently working their way up the federal court system. The stakes for labor law are high in this election.
One might assume that this means that labor would enthusiastically back the Democrats. However, while many labor leaders like UAW president Shawn Fain have done so, others have remained aloof. For instance, the International Association of Firefighters and IBT, both of which endorsed Biden in 2020, have announced that they are not endorsing either presidential candidate in 2024.
Most dramatically (and controversially), IBT President Sean O’Brien spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention, and while he did not outright endorse Trump, he called the former president a “tough SOB.” Dustin Guastella wrote in Jacobin that this represents a “Return to Gompers”, referring to the political strategy of American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers in the early twentieth century. Rather than permanently aligning with one party, Gompers argued that labor should be politically neutral, supporting whichever candidate was the best for labor regardless of their party. Thus, labor could use its leverage to force the parties to bid for labor’s support.
On its face, this makes sense. Indeed, Democrats do not necessarily deserve the unqualified loyalty of labor—it was a Democratic president, after all, who signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, one of the biggest drivers of labor’s decline. But as Guastella points out, Gompers himself won very few actual concessions from either party. And this strategy becomes difficult to defend when it leads to a union leader praising Donald Trump, who has promised to crack down on labor unions and proudly campaigns with Elon Musk, a notorious union-buster.
Still, the outcome of the 2024 election may have a dramatic impact on the political course taken by labor. If Trump wins, and Sean O’Brien and other politically ambivalent union leaders are able to exercise some degree of leverage on his administration (or if Harris wins and fails to deliver on the PRO Act and other labor priorities), then the “Return to Gompers” could become a more mainstream position in the labor movement. However, if Trump wins and casts labor law into the dark ages, then Sean O’Brien’s tacit support will be as bitterly ironic as the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization’s (“PATCO’s”) support for Ronald Reagan in 1980 right before President Reagan destroyed the union in 1981.
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