Unions and Democracy

Unions play a vital role in our democracy. They educate their members about the political process and mobilize members to get out the vote. They also provide a counterweight to the outsized influence of corporate spending in our political system by advocating for policies that working people broadly support. In a system in which access to deep pockets often determines electoral success, unions provide training and resources that enable working people to run for office successfully and represent the interests of their constituents, rather than those of wealthy donors. Unions back reforms to make our society more just, equitable, and democratic and oppose policies that seek to deny people rights and power.

Unions make democracy a way of life. Unions are democratically run, giving workers leadership opportunities and teaching them that it is possible to change material conditions through democratic processes. Unions also foster community engagement, and they fight for policies that strengthen communities, advocating for improved education, health care, public transportation, and government services. 

Unions have long fought for increased democracy. Indeed, Senator Wagner, the sponsor of the National Labor Relations Act, saw the labor movement as essential to democracy. In his words, “Democracy cannot work unless it is honored in the factory as well as the polling booth; men cannot be truly free in body and in spirit unless their freedom extends into the places where they earn their daily bread.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, trade unionists fought for women’s suffrage. In the 1930s, union organizers in Alabama registered Black voters and opposed the poll tax. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the 1940s, union organizers emphasized civic education, community organizing, and voter registration as critical components of their strategy for representation of both Black and white workers in a single bargaining unit at a tobacco factory, successfully registering employees to vote and securing paid time off to vote. The legacy of unions being at the forefront of the fight for fairness and equity lives on today: about two-thirds of people who are represented by union contracts today are women and/or people of color.

Decades of union organizing laid the groundwork for the passage of the New Deal — unprecedented social welfare legislation that altered socio-economic relations in this country — and the reshaping of the Supreme Court in a direction that valorized political and social equality, along with economic rights. In turn, the National Labor Relations Act, labor’s “Magna Carta,” ushered in an era of robust union density, high wages, and improved quality of life for those workers who were covered by it. It is not a coincidence that during the heyday of a strong and politically active labor movement, Congress passed additional pro-worker legislation, implemented policies to curb income and wealth inequality, and eventually combated racism through the passage of landmark civil rights legislation. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers, was a leader in the civil rights movement. He spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Following the election of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, conservative business leaders organized to undermine the democratization of economic and political power that his administration promised. Their first substantial victory was the passage, in 1947, of the Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, which weakened workers’ power in numerous ways, including by limiting the forms of collective action they could take and sanctioning “right to work” laws, which limit the resources unions have to represent workers effectively and were intended to perpetuate Jim Crow labor relations in the South. In the following decades, twenty-seven states have passed “right to work” legislation, and union density has declined from about one-third of the private sector workforce to just six percent today. 

The decline of organized labor in this country has contributed to the growth of income and wealth disparities, as well as political inequality. And in a vicious cycle, numerous legislative efforts to improve both civil rights and labor law have been thwarted in our increasingly broken political system. Tellingly, big-money interests, such as the Koch Network, that have long agitated for anti-worker policies also seek to undermine democracy reform legislation.

We need democracy reform in order to pass legislation that protects workers, ends racial and gender wealth disparities, and empowers working people to stand up for themselves and each other. But at the same time, if we are to rebuild our democracy, we must rebuild the American labor movement. The critical role the labor movement played in transforming American society in the 20th century proves this to be true. In a country with the most regressive labor laws among developed countries, rebuilding the American labor movement is no easy feat, but it must be done. Workers must come together in their workplaces and across industries and geographical regions, demanding that their voices be heard not only on the job but in our political system.