No Hunker-Down Unionism

The results of the November 2024 election show that the authoritarian right has built a significant social base. They have consolidated their core sectors among substantial parts of capital, white nationalists, Evangelical Christians, “America firsters,” “law-and-order” voters, and more. They are now successfully experimenting with peeling away sectors that should be central to the base of the labor and progressive movements, including some in the multiracial working class. The Right is constructing broad fronts to win electoral majorities. While their coalition is unstable internally, it will take intense strategic campaigns among labor and progressives to expose and take advantage of those contradictions.

The Democratic Party, anchored by the broader US liberal center, clearly cannot address the multiple crises in the country and world. In the November elections, the Democrats showed increasing weakness among the multiracial working class, including an inability to connect with tens of millions of working-class people who chose not to vote. The party is increasingly out of touch, defending an economy that is failing working people and aiding genocide in Palestine. In this context, the Democrats have created the conditions for many voters to see MAGA as the agent of change.

In the coming years, defeating MAGA authoritarianism must be US labor’s main objective, embedded within a long-term strategy to fight for multiracial democracy and an economy in which working-class people thrive. I propose that labor adopt an intensified “block and build” approach.

“Blocking” means organizing broad labor, community, and political alliances against authoritarianism, fighting tooth and nail against attacks on democratic rights, and vigorously defending the most vulnerable. “Building” means massively expanding a social base and movement infrastructure that will fight authoritarianism long-term and build campaigns for multiracial democracy and an economy that radically departs from the corporate-driven, unequal model that has dominated since the 1970s.

This objective comes in the context of efforts by Trump and MAGA forces to bring some unions more formally into the Right’s coalition, which echoes similar efforts by racist authoritarians throughout history. Trump has met directly with some union leaders, plans to appoint a tepidly pro-labor Republican for labor secretary, uses Right populist language, and is floating ideas on mild social democratic measures (though the proposals are often nativist and discriminatory) that will appeal to some workers.

A critical component of an intensified block and build strategy within labor must be constructing a new vision in which the US labor movement is unapologetically fighting for the entirety of the multiracial working class, not just currently unionized workers. Though Trump will dramatically weaken the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and more employers will engage in anti-union campaigns, this is not the time for hunker-down unionism, in which we try to weather a four-year storm by hoping for a better day.

This is a time to shift union strategies, not only because of worsening economic conditions and the crises that Trump and the MAGA movement present, but also because of opportunities: a majority of nonunion workers say they would join a union if given the chance; a substantial majority of voters support unions; organizing-focused leadership has won in the United Auto Workers (UAW), many educator unions, and in more sectors; and there is an openness among more union leaders to an organizing approach. While we will need to establish priorities and make some difficult tactical choices, our overall orientation must be bold, aggressive, and unapologetic in seeking to change the world.

Tactically for labor, intensified blocking means investing more in community and political relationships to build the broad antiauthoritarian front necessary to defend democratic rights and the most vulnerable. It means connecting with unions internationally for lessons on fighting authoritarianism, working with emergency response networks, and fighting for and filling gaps in local, regional, and state protections in support of reproductive justice, and against white supremacist actions, deportation of immigrants, and attacks on the LGBTQ community. It means demonstrating a commitment for all to see: that union workers, with boots on the ground, at women’s health clinics, at neighborhood defense picket lines, at LGBTQ and immigration centers, at anti-police brutality actions, and in the community, are leading in defending rights.

Regarding offensive tactics, intensified building for labor means strengthening our organizations and promoting a new vision for society. Both must be founded upon building power in measurable ways. This means dramatically expanding the number of people involved (having 11 percent of US workers in unions does not give us anywhere near enough power), strengthening alliances, and increasing the reach and resonance of our vision.

Working with community groups has been a consistent weak point for US labor. That must change. For example, UTLA would not have been able to shift power relations in Los Angeles schools without a methodical and collaborative two-and-a-half-year process that initiated Reclaim Our Schools LA with three anchor community organizations. Since the coalition’s launch in December 2016, UTLA has granted $75,000 per year to each anchor organization to staff their respective education work with Reclaim and to help them build their own independent organizational bases.

The work of the Reclaim coalition as a whole has been central in collaborative strategic planning, common-good bargaining, striking, winning school board resolutions, and supporting labor/community coalitions across the country. It is only through intentional work with community that labor will be able to build a multifaceted working-class movement.

Regarding vision, the perspective labor puts forward must be developed with community organizations and offer an analysis of the recent election — the destructive impacts of racism, misogyny, transphobia, and xenophobia in the election; the economic suffering of the multiracial working class; and the profound alienation of tens of millions of working-class voters. Our vision for society must explain why economic inequality exists, identify corporate and billionaire enemies, and pick fights. It must be based on meeting immediate material needs, justice, anti-oppression, economic redistribution, democratic rights, climate justice, a cease-fire in Gaza, and international peace.

This is not the Democratic Party’s vision. The party’s corporate and billionaire funders, and its defense of economic inequality and militarism, including the genocidal war in Gaza, are structural barriers to the party advancing this vision. We need independent electoral vehicles. Yet while we are building these, we must at times be in tactical alliance with the Democratic Party in the fight against MAGA authoritarianism, working together toward specific goals based on time, place, and conditions.

Many of us did exactly this in campaigning for Kamala Harris in the recent election. This approach is particularly important in the US South and Southwest. Yet while in these tactical alliances, we must be intentional about our organizations remaining clearly and publicly distinct from and frequently critical of the Democratic Party — while simultaneously exposing the contradiction between the Right’s limited appeals to workers and its authoritarian and billionaire-driven program. Finding the correct approach for this tactical alliance work with the Democratic Party, while simultaneously building independent electoral vehicles and promoting political education on the approaches of the two major parties, is going to require debate within our movement and careful, collective decision-making within and across organizations.

The Union Difference

The bulk of US labor has not taken such an independent approach for decades. Unions have been under bipartisan attack, generally deferential to the Democratic Party, and have most often based strategy on methods that do not build power, such as transactional relationships with elected officials, mainstream organizations, and employers. Yet with the current imperative to build an independent, expanding, multiracial working-class movement that includes people from all walks of life, the labor movement plays a unique role.

Unions are mass organizations that bring people together across differences: the common denominator of members is their employer. Unions have their own resources, are often multiracial, many have democratic mechanisms, and they are one of few organizations that give working people direct experience with democracy. Many unions have the potential for scale across regions, states, and the country, as well as legal and political structures for bargaining and pushing common good demands.

Unions have the potential, and often legal rights, to create economic disruption. Moreover, unions have a long history of fighting against authoritarianism, fascism, and repression — in South Africa in the fight against apartheid, in Central America in the struggles against US-supported authoritarian regimes, in the United States in support of the civil rights movement and against anti-worker repression, and in many other instances domestically and internationally.

As the most diverse organizations in the United States, unions are the best vehicle to address racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, and xenophobic views, and the social isolation and alienation that exacerbate them. Understanding this is critical as Trump seeks to build more support among workers, within a specifically anti-immigrant, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, and racially discriminatory law-and-order program. Working with others in fights against the boss or around issue campaigns gives people concrete experiences with others that demonstrate commonality, produce appreciation of differences, and promote working across differences. People learn solidarity in union fights, and being a union member leads to progressive views on the economy, race, gender, and more.

From this perspective, it is critical to understand that tens of millions of working-class people who voted for Trump or chose not to vote at all are in labor’s orbit, can be important members of a multiracial working-class movement, and must be engaged. Organizing to radically increase union membership is a foundational part of the work ahead — not only for economic justice, but for multiracial democracy.

The primary tasks of an intensified block and build approach will be different based on context. In blue areas, it will include building zones of resistance, competing for governing power in labor/community coalitions, and fighting for structural demands for economic redistribution and democratic rights. Unions in blue areas should systematically organize to provide solidarity support for actions in red and purple areas, and should direct resources to organizations in those areas.

In purple areas, the strategy will include defending the most vulnerable, building campaigns for economic redistribution and democratic rights, and organizing to defeat MAGA in 2026. In red areas, the work will include defending the most vulnerable, building mutual aid and alternative institutions, and organizing labor/community issue campaigns that split the Right’s coalition. In all contexts, resources should go toward organizing drives and campaigns where workers and communities can build strategic leverage against employers of size and political importance.

Five Foundational Elements for Labor Within an Intensified Block and Build Approach

In order to carry out this approach, labor must invest in five foundational elements. Using a piecemeal approach will not work.

While collective discussion will be needed to decide what elements should be emphasized in particular moments, all five elements are needed in the overall program to defeat authoritarianism and build the foundations for a just society.

1. Plow resources into organizing, through using the labor movement’s billions in net assets, redirecting existing funds toward organizing, and, where necessary, building democratic campaigns for union member dues increases.

Organizing must be founded upon majority and supermajority methods, and the essential mechanics of organizing, including one-on-ones, individual assessments, list work, leader identification and development, and structure tests. We must emphasize structure-based organizing, working through structures like workplaces, apartments, neighborhoods, and schools that bind people together, and in which methodical organizing can be done within defined universes. Taking these approaches means recruiting and training talented union staff, and training hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file workers through programs like Jane McAlevey’s Skills to Win at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the international Organizing for Power program.

Organizing must focus on bringing existing union members into campaigns and expanding to reach millions of workers not currently connected to unions. The latter, depending on context, should include building for recognition, winning first contracts, driving for majority and supermajority union density, investing in new sectors for unionization and structure-based community organizing, and, particularly critical under a hostile NLRB and in red and purple regions, supporting worker centers and alternative organizing approaches. This work must build multiracial working-class solidarity that unites workers of color with white workers, who encompass the plurality of people in poverty in the United States.

With Trump’s attacks, a weakened NLRB, and emboldened employers, all of the above will require innovation. This may mean building new structures through which local, state, and national unions, across different sectors, jointly support initiatives, such as the Los Angeles Manufacturing Action Project experiment in the 1990s. It will require new collaborations. For example, unionized educators can play roles in organizing nonunion workers in or connected to public school families. It will require understanding that workers have multiple community identities — as church-goers, block club members, public school parents, political constituents, affinity and cultural group members — and require supporting workers to lead in those respective communities. And the organizing must include deep political education on the economy, society, and electoral structure. The best political education is carefully embedded within concrete fights and campaigns.

Labor must invest deeply in organizing within communities. This must involve building labor/community coalitions and investing in community groups’ structure-based organizing in apartment buildings, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and other locations. Moreover, community organizations and their national networks often provide essential leadership in momentum-based campaigns, aspects of which were seen in the Occupy movement in 2011 and 2012, and the anti-police brutality movement of the 2010s. These campaigns are often not based primarily in structures, but create broad, escalating mobilizations that respond to crises. These can have critical impacts in stopping attacks, shaping public narrative, and bringing people into activism.

Campaigns based on supermajority, structure-based organizing can benefit from momentum-based actions to shape narrative and bring masses of people into action; and momentum-based campaigns can benefit from embedding within structures in order to build durable power. We must experiment to find powerful synergy.

2. Campaign and negotiate for common-good demands that are important to workers and that touch people not currently connected to unions.

Local and state campaigns for common-good demands must be grounded both in defending the most vulnerable and going on offense. To build broad majorities and supermajorities behind campaigns, common-good demands should be packaged together with pay, health care, and working conditions demands wherever possible. Demands and campaigns should be collaboratively developed with labor/community coalitions, with an eye toward building long-term relationships.

Universalist demands, such as health care, childcare, and minimum wage, should be paired with demands that explicitly push back on racism, sexism, xenophobia, attacks on the LGBTQ community, and other oppressions. Implementing a common-good approach at the national level means building coalitions behind demands for structural change — national health care, funding for communities not bombs, Green New Deal, free college, and social security.

3. Strike and walk out.

Strikes and walk-outs uniquely exact a cost from employers, government entities, and the corporate class, and are thus essential to strategy. They are critical to winning defensive and offensive fights, helping unions build supermajority structures, and shaping public consciousness on the conditions of the multiracial working class. Strikes and walk-outs have often been unique opportunities to create solidarity across unions, sectors, union and nonunion workers, workers and community organizations, workers and independent political organizations, unions and worker centers, and across racial, gender, sexuality, and immigration status differences.

Deep and carefully nurtured partnerships with community organizations are essential to strikes and walk-outs across geographies and play an especially unique role in regions in which unions and workers may face retaliation for work stoppages. In places where we are not yet striking or walking out, we should be intentionally and methodically building the capacity to do so.

4. Use proven supermajority, structure-based organizing methods to build independent political power.

Puya Gerami, Jeffrey Lichtenstein, Bob Master, and Marybeth Seitz-Brown have written on the essential task of unions building political power and engaging in elections more deeply. Elections are the broadest form of political engagement for working-class people. The Right and the corporate class use elections to move their agendas, and victories in the political realm can impact the entirety of the multiracial working class. Unions must see themselves as, and act like, independent political organizations, committed to building a new vision for society.

This must include moving away from seeing elections and politics as primarily transactions, cutting checks, small-room and top-level relationships, and lobbying. It means unions investing deeply in building alliances with community groups and independent political organizations, such as the Working Families Party and Carolina Federation. Unions must move toward seeing electoral and political work as primarily member-based, in the same way organizing unions see their contract, new worker, and density campaigns as member-based. This means applying supermajority methods to electoral work and political accountability campaigns: driving for quantified majority involvement from union members, having conversations with majorities of targeted voters, and using individual assessment, leader identification, and follow-up practices in door-to-door canvassing.

Using this approach means supporting rank-and-file leaders to develop seamlessly across workplace, contract, and political work. It means local unions engaging state and national issues, national unions investing locally, and local campaigns using power analysis to pressure direct and indirect targets at multiple levels of corporate and government structures. It means seeing electoral and political work as inextricably intertwined with member action and mass power-building.

5. Coordinate at as many levels as possible and build toward a general strike in Spring 2028.

National unions across sectors must coordinate to allocate resources to strategically chosen regions, sectors, and campaigns. Local and state unions must do the same — and when necessary, do so independently of national unions that are unwilling.

Local, state, and national unions with more resources should engage their internal democratic processes to direct resources to regions and sectors — for example, to red and purple states — outside their jurisdiction that have fewer resources and that are critical to a national strategy. Labor should line up contract expiration dates and compression points wherever possible, a practice we are seeing examples of across unions, sectors, and geographies in California, Connecticut, and Minnesota.

Our movement must build for mass coordinated action in Spring 2028, aligned with the UAW’s contract expiration dates on May 1 of that year and their president Shawn Fain’s call for a nationwide general strike. This should involve local, regional, state, and national demands developed across labor and community over the coming years.

For unions in states with robust bargaining rights, this means aligning contract expiration dates for 2028 across sectors. For unions in states with limited bargaining rights, this means aligning meet-and-confer and memorandum of understanding negotiation timelines. For unions with no bargaining rights and for community organizations, worker centers, and independent political organizations, this means developing issue-based or electoral campaigns that reach compression points in Spring 2028.

This is an opportunity the likes of which we have not seen for decades that allows us to build behind local, state, and national demands within contract, issue-based, and electoral campaigns. It is also an unprecedented opportunity, through the build to 2028, to jointly strengthen supermajority structures, coalitions, and movement infrastructure.

With the more vicious and unhinged attacks coming in Trump’s second administration, ongoing war internationally, climate change, and the suffering and inequality produced by economic and social structures, we face a deep crisis. Yet with the popularity of unions and an increase in progressive union leaderships, along with a multiracial working class looking for change, there are opportunities we must take advantage of. There has been no time in recent history that it is more important for US labor to think and act outside the box, in constructing an intensified block and build approach.