Unions’ policy demands haven’t changed, nor have their ideological commitments.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory and his nomination of pro-union one-term House member Lori Chavez-DeRemer as secretary of labor, there has been some talk about how being more accommodating to unions could help Republicans, or that unions might be starting to move over to the Republican column. It’s certainly true that many union members are Republicans, and they have voted that way for decades. But it’s not true that unions as organizations are going to be friends of Republicans.
The latest evidence for this is the SEIU’s announcement on Wednesday that it is rejoining the AFL-CIO on the eve of Trump’s return to the White House. AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler and SEIU president April Verrett went on MSNBC to talk to Joy Reid about it, to give you some indication of where their political preferences lie.
In the interview, Shuler made clear her opposition to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s push for government efficiency, saying the AFL-CIO is going to be “on defense” against government job cuts. Nothing in the interview suggested that the unions are looking for common ground with Trump.
“As April and I have been talking about, we got to be on offense,” Shuler said of their plans for the upcoming years. “This economy is changing, changing rapidly, with technology and clean energy and, you know, all of the growth that we’re seeing in places like the South where workers are not used to unions and it’s a real opportunity for them to step into their power, for them to see that unions are the place to make the change that they desperately want to see in their workplaces, and coming together is how we’re more powerful, and we balance the scales of the economy.”
To be clear, that means going into Republican-governed states that voted for Trump and organizing workers whose dues will be skimmed to fund the political spending of AFL-CIO unions, nearly all of which goes to Democrats, and the “social-justice unionism” that the AFL-CIO has championed for years. And never mind that the media-hyped winning streak for the United Auto Workers in the south ended last year at one, when Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama voted against the union.
Verrett told Reid that unions need to “write new rules” because “we work with a set of laws in this country that are not written for working people to get ahead.” Let’s be clear about what that means, too: The repeal of right-to-work laws currently on the books in 26 states (25 of which voted for Trump in 2024), the full expansion of collective bargaining to all government employees in all states (including the mostly red states that currently don’t allow it or restrict it), and the restriction or elimination of freelance work for millions of workers (even though 80 percent of them say they prefer independent contracting over traditional employment).
Those are the consequences of two bills, the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, that the AFL-CIO and the SEIU support and Democrats would happily pass into law if given the chance. Chavez-DeRemer also co-sponsored these bills during her single House term, one of the only Republicans to do so, which explains why she was Teamsters president Sean O’Brien’s choice for secretary of labor.
Republican union members don’t need a right-wing version of the PRO Act, whatever that would even mean. They need the freedom to exit organizations that don’t share their values and work to elect politicians they vote against. Ninety-four percent of American private-sector workers are not union members, a number that has been gradually increasing for decades no matter which party is in power. Being pro-worker does not mean being pro-union, and the mistaken belief that it does has cost Democrats dearly with many voters.
Unions’ policy demands haven’t changed, nor have their ideological commitments. They still hate Trump and are now teaming up to oppose his agenda with their campaign-funding war chests and their armies of political volunteers. Republicans who pretend otherwise are deluding themselves.