After the 2012 presidential election, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told labor journalist Josh Eidelson that the union federation “won’t be taken for granted” by the White House and the Democratic Party. Fast forward to a recent Wall Street Journal article: union contributions to politicians (almost entirely Democrats) are up 38 percent, with the AFL-CIO chipping in $11 million and SEIU over $30 million.

It’s possible, I suppose, that unions have devised a secret method for holding Democrats accountable behind closed doors while shoveling ever-greater mounds of money into their coffers. Labor has long backed a party that is addicted to scorning and betraying them, but maybe this time, with some well-timed whispers in politicians’ ears and a couple extra million in donations thrown in, things will be different.

But recent WikiLeaks emails of union leaders’ correspondence with high-ups in Hillary Clinton’s campaign suggest that rather than buying support for a working-class agenda from the candidate through their massive contributions — and through some leaders’ efforts to sink Bernie Sanders’s primary challenge to Clinton — labor will keep getting more of the same.