As the 2023 proxy season comes to end, there’s one clear loser: the AFL-CIO.

The labor federation and its union counterparts have historically used their considerable financial investments, including funds from union pension plans, as a potent tool against corporate America. The playbook works like this: The union’s investment group purchases shares in a public company and then submits shareholder proposals urging audits of labor practices and noninterference commitments toward labor organizing.

Typically, the companies targeted by these union proposals are simultaneously targeted by a union organizing drive — often by the same labor entity. In his book, The Rise of the Working Class Shareholder, labor historian David Webber describes these proposals as a “rare good-news story” for union allies and an effective means to enhance organizing activity.

But the good news for labor came to an end this year, as AFL-CIO-backed shareholder proposals suffered several high-profile losses. On June 22, shareholders of video game giant Activision Blizzard opposed by a 2-to-1 margin a proposal to adopt a “non-interference” position on unionization in the company. In May, Amazon shareholders rejected a similar proposal, and in April, Wells Fargo did the same.

The proposals were nothing if not self-interested. For instance, the Activision proposal was submitted by the investment arm of the AFL-CIO and would have forbid the company from, among other things, speaking with employees about unionization drives. Unsurprisingly, this proposal coincides with a campaign by the Communications Workers of America, an AFL-CIO affiliate, to unionize employees at Activision Blizzard.

Shareholders of the company were apparently put off by more than this conflict of interest. In a letter to shareholders opposing the proposal, Activision cited examples of its “commitment to good faith collective bargaining,” such as the recognition of a union at its Raven Software subsidiary. Activision also flipped the union’s invocation of the United Nations's Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its head, noting that the same declaration included the right to a “secret vote” for elections, which the union’s proposal could have eliminated.

Wells Fargo similarly addressed the union’s arguments head-on, rejecting the notion that employees lacked a voice at work. “When our employees have concerns, we want to hear directly from them to understand their perspectives and determine how we can work together to improve our workplace,” the company said in a response to shareholders. It then cited a half-dozen different communications vehicles and pathways that employees have to speak out.

Amazon tossed cold water on labor’s suggestion that its workforce was a hotbed of union activity. In its letter to shareholders, the company noted that “less than 0.4% of [their] total U.S. workforce has voted in favor of union representation” and that only four Amazon locations had unions that met the minimum requirement set by the National Labor Relations Board to schedule a unionization vote. (Union interest at Amazon has been so diminished that the Amazon Labor Union was forced to withdraw several representation petitions.)

In each instance above, shareholders favored a fact-based approach by the company over the fact-free rhetoric of the union. It’s not dissimilar to employees in the private sector, who for several decades have been voting with their wallets against union representation. In fact, union membership in the private sector has fallen from a high water mark of 25% in the 1960s to just 6% now.

In many ways, labor unions have put themselves out of a job. Hard-fought battles in decades past have led to labor laws that protect all workers, no union required. In recent years, unions have also found their brands tarnished. One prominent member of the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers union, was the subject of a multiyear federal investigation that landed multiple executives, including two union presidents, in prison. The aforementioned CWA union also faces allegations from within its own ranks that a union board member and candidate for union president engaged in violent and abusive behavior with union members and staff. With an unethical track record like this, shareholder proposals urging “ethical” behavior can be hard to take seriously.

Companies don’t win every shareholder fight. Recent union-backed proposals at Starbucks and Apple, for instance, have received shareholder support. But these high-profile losses offer hope that shareholders could rein in labor’s worst shareholder activism excesses.

Jeffrey Joseph is an adjunct professor at the Schar School of Government and Policy at George Mason University.