Labor’s Resurgence Can Continue Despite Trump
The second Trump administration will seek to undermine unions. But the labor movement has momentum and plenty of opportunities to fight back.
Does Trump’s re-election mean that the U.S. labor resurgence is over? Not necessarily.
It’s true that the new administration is preparing major attacks against workers and the labor movement. And many union leaders will assume that the most we can hope for over the next four years is to survive through purely defensive struggles.
But unions are actually still well-positioned to continue their organizing and bargaining momentum. Here are eight positive factors that should ward off despair — and that should encourage unions to invest more, not less, into organizing the unorganized:
1. The economic forces fueling Trumpism also favor labor’s continued resurgence. After the pandemic laid bare the fundamental unfairness of our economic system, workers responded with a burst of union organizing and the most significant strike activity in decades. The same underlying economic forces — chronic economic insecurity and inequality — helped propel Trumpism to a narrow victory in the 2024 elections. But Trump’s actual policies will inevitably exacerbate economic inequality, undermining the Republican Party’s hollow populist rhetoric.
Stepping into the breach of Trump’s fake populism, unions remain workers’ best tool to provide a real solution to economic insecurity. And projected low unemployment will continue to provide a fertile economic environment for new organizing. As long as we remain in a tight labor market, employers will have less power to threaten employees who dare to unionize their workplaces and workers will have more bargaining leverage against employers, increasing the chances of successful — and headline-grabbing — strikes.
2. Unions can still grow under Republican administrations. It’s certainly true that the organizing terrain will be significantly harder under Trump and a hostile National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But it’s still possible to fight and win even in these conditions.
It’s worth remembering that US labor’s current uptick began with the statewide teachers’ strikes that swept across red states in 2018 during Trump’s first term. And NLRB data shows that putting major resources towards new organizing can go a long way towards counter-balancing the negative impact of an adverse political context.
Unions organized significantly more workers under George W. Bush’s administration than under Barack Obama. Why? The main reason is that the labor movement in the early 2000s was still in the midst of a relatively well-resourced push to organize the unorganized, whereas by the time Obama took office labor had mostly thrown in the towel on external organizing, hoping instead to be saved from above by lobbying establishment Democrats to pass national labor law reform. Labor can grow over the coming years if it starts putting serious resources towards this goal.
3. Labor has huge financial assets at its disposal. According to the latest data from the Department of Labor, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets and only $6.4 billion in debt. These assets—the vast majority of which are liquid assets—can help defend against the coming political attack and be deployed in aggressive organizing drives and strikes. Unions have the financial cushion to go on the offensive while simultaneously defending themselves from regulatory and legislative attacks.
4. Unions remain popular and trusted. According to a September 2024 Gallup poll, 70% of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest support since the 1950s — even 49% of Republicans these days support unions. Overall, Americans trust organized labor far more than the President, Congress, Big Business, and the media.
When workers have the opportunity to vote for a union at their workplace, unions win 77% of those elections. The American public also supports strikes. According to a poll by YouGov in August, 55% of Americans believe that going on strike is an effective strategy for workers to get what they want from management, compared to 23% who say no. Similarly, 50% of Americans believe it is unacceptable to scab, while only 26% say it is acceptable. Strong public support for labor continues to provide fertile ground for a union advance.
5. Organized labor is reforming. The bad news: most union officials remain risk-averse and their failure to seriously pivot towards organizing new members — despite exceptionally favorable conditions since 2020 — helped pave the way for Trump’s inroads among working people. The good news: the “troublemakers” wing of the labor movement is larger than ever, as seen in the dramatic growth of Labor Notes, the election of militants to head a growing number of local and national unions, and the emergence of much-needed rank-and-file reform movements in unions like the UFCW.
Most notably, a reformed United Auto Workers led by Shawn Fain is going full steam ahead with its push to organize the auto industry across South — an effort that will soon get a big boost when unionized Volkswagen workers finalize their first contract. Rank-and-file activists across the country can continue to point to the UAW, as well as other fighting unions, as an example that their unions should be emulating.
6. Young worker activism is not going away. Most of the labor upsurge since 2020 has been driven forward by Gen Z and Millennial workers radicalized by economic inequality, Bernie Sanders, and racial justice struggles. And contrary to what some have suggested, the 2024 election did not register a major shift to the right among young people, but rather a sharp drop in young Democratic turnout.
The recent proliferation of union campaigns across Amazon drivers is just the latest instance of a generational-driven uptick that continues to spread across Starbucks, higher ed, journalism, and beyond. These “labor-pilled” young activists are unlikely to throw in the towel just because Trump is again in office — if anything, the dramatic failure of establishment Democratic politics (combined with the power deficits of ephemeral street protests) will likely grow the ranks of young people convinced that workplace organizing is the central axis for winning progressive change. And their efforts will continue to be boosted by projects like the Inside Organizer School, which trains salts to unionize targeted workplaces, and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, which helps any worker organize their job.
7. The (latent) power of unions to disrupt the political and economic system is high. Despite declines in union membership and density (the percentage of the workforce in a union), union members still have significant representation in critical sectors of the economy.
Labor’s existing power provides a base for beating back the worst of Trump’s attacks and expanding union representation to non-union workers in the semi-organized sectors. In addition, coordinated strikes or labor unrest in any of these sectors would significantly disrupt the functioning of the economy or public services, providing a potent tool for workers and unions. While logistically and legally difficult, workers and their unions have the power to shut down critical sectors of the economy if they so choose — an approach that could reporalize the country around class lines instead of Republican-fueled scapegoating.
8. Republicans may overplay their hand, creating new openings for labor. A scorched earth legislative, regulatory, and judicial attack on labor law may create unintended opportunities. For example, if the Supreme Court follows Elon Musk’s bidding by throwing out the National Labor Relations Act —the primary law governing private sector organizing—states would have the power to enact union-friendly labor laws and legal restrictions on strikes and boycotts could be loosened. As Jennifer Abruzzo — the NLRB’s general counsel – told Bloomberg, if the federal government steps away from protecting the right to organize, “I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands.”
Conclusion
Labor’s decades-long tendency to defensively hunker down is one of the major factors that has led our movement — and the country — into crisis. Turning things around will depend on pivoting to a new approach.
The strongest case for labor to scale up ambitious organizing efforts and disruptive strike action is not just that it’s possible, but that it’s necessary. Without increased initiatives to expand our base and to polarize the country around our issues, union density is sure to keep dropping. Organized labor’s last islands of strength — from K-12 public education and the federal government to UPS and Midwest auto — will become extremely vulnerable to attack. And unions will be forced to fight entirely on the political terrain chosen by Republicans, who will paint them as a narrow interest group of privileged employees beholden to “union bosses,” Democratic leaders, and “woke” ideology.
Sometimes going on the offense is also the best form of defense. The best way to expose Trump’s faux populism is by waging large-scale workplace battles that force all politicians to show which side they’re on.
Nobody has a crystal ball about what lays ahead, nor should anybody underestimate the importance of defending our movement — and all working people — against Trump’s looming attacks. But it’s not factually or tactically justified to dismiss the potential for labor advance over the next four years.
Conditions overall remain favorable for labor growth, despite Trump’s re-election. Political contexts matter, but so do factors like the economy, high public support for unions, labor’s deep financial pockets, the growth of union reform efforts, labor’s continued disruptive capacity, and the spread of young worker activism. Rebuilding a powerful labor movement remains our best bet to defeat Trumpism, reverse rampant inequalities, and transform American politics. Now is not the time for retreat.
This article originally appeared in Radish Research, Bohner’s free newsletter on the labor movement.
Chris Bohner is a union researcher and author of the Radish Research newsletter.
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. His newsletter, Labor Politics, can be found here.