In January, organized labor will say goodbye to the best friend it has had in the White House since the days of the New Deal. While President Biden’s time in office didn’t result in a wave of union growth on the scale of the 1930s, he lowered the barriers to organizing, which helped double the number of union petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board. He also used the presidential bully pulpit to drum up support for labor struggles, becoming the first sitting president to walk a picket line and helping settle the recent longshoreman strike on terms favorable to the workers.
How will unions fare under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration? The signals have been mixed. Trump made overtures to organized labor during the campaign, most notably with his invitation to Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to address the Republican National Convention. But Trump’s public praise for his donor and adviser Elon Musk’s firing of workers and his refusal to commit to vetoing national “right-to-work” legislation hinted at a reversion to the traditional GOP anti-unionism that defined his first term.
Then again, his biggest post-election move in this area has been the nomination of pro-union Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.) to head up the Department of Labor—a pick praised by O’Brien and other labor leaders. It makes for a dramatic contrast with Trump’s appointments for that role in his first term: fast-food CEO Andy Puzder, a vocal supporter of rolling back New Deal labor protections, and Eugene Scalia, who built his legal career by helping corporations evade safety and labor protections.
Regardless of how Trump’s remaining appointments turn out, unions are better positioned to weather the changes in Washington than they were in 2016. Emboldened by a tight labor market, historically high approval ratings, and a friendly White House, unions today are more robust, more popular, and more audacious than they were a decade ago—notwithstanding lagging density. The day before the election, Boeing workers joined the ranks of dockers, auto workers, hotel employees, and Hollywood writers in winning a historically high wage and benefits package. Major strike activity increased by 280 percent in 2023, and there is little sign that labor is ready to let up.
“Trump owes his victory this time to a growing multiracial working-class electorate.”
With this increased power, unions are poised to test the fault lines in Trump’s coalition. Despite his friendliness with union-busting billionaires and reliance on Paul Ryan-era policy wonks, Trump owes his victory this time to a growing multiracial working-class electorate closer to Sean O’Brien than Elon Musk when it comes to economics.
Trump will have to take a side sooner rather than later. One major fight pitting these factions against each other concerns the future of an NLRB ruling targeting companies that use subcontractors and temp agencies to evade federal labor protections. Last year, more than 80 delivery drivers in Palmdale, Calif., joined the Teamsters, becoming the first Amazon drivers to organize a union successfully. Amazon’s subcontractor soon reached an agreement, but the corporate giant itself stonewalled, claiming that the drivers weren’t the company’s employees despite Amazon controlling nearly every aspect of their working conditions. The NLRB didn’t buy it, ruling that Amazon is the drivers’ employer and is obligated to recognize the union. (Compact contributor Sen. Josh Hawley was the only Republican lawmaker to sign a letter urging that the drivers be treated as employees.)
To say this decision was unpopular in corporate America is an understatement. The Chamber of Commerce sued the NLRB over it, and a federal district court in Texas struck it down. There is no question that corporate lobbyists and Jeff Bezos, who won some last-minute goodwill from the GOP over his refusal to let The Washington Post endorse Harris, will lean hard on the incoming president to kill it altogether.
Hundreds of Amazon drivers are clamoring to join the Teamsters and counting on this rule to make it easier. Will Trump side with them or Amazon? The emergence of a pro-worker wing of the conservative movement offers a sliver of hope. While they are unlikely to see eye-to-eye with everything on AFL-CIO’s policy wish list, Republicans who want to show their pro-worker bona fides can back up their rhetoric with action, including pushing back against efforts to roll back Biden’s labor reforms.
Chavez-DeRemer offers a model for other GOP legislators to follow. Despite her party membership, she scored the endorsement of 10 unions for her re-election bid. This included the Teamsters, which hadn’t supported a Republican congressional candidate in that district for two decades. That’s because she went beyond cultural pickup truck populism, backing UPS workers during last year’s contract negotiations and endorsing the PRO Act, a law that would lower barriers to union organizing erected since the New Deal.
Such an approach is in some GOP lawmakers’ long-term electoral interest. The 2024 election was less a Republican realignment than a sign of working-class discontent with both parties. Working-class voters deserted the Democrats in droves, but they are far from loyal, rock-ribbed Republicans. “Union workers and nonunion workers alike feel like there is no home right now for the things they value the most,” says Jimmy Williams Jr., president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.
This political homelessness opens the field to political entrepreneurs willing to combine economic populism with a cultural centrism that meets working-class voters where they are. But that means bucking the social, economic, and cultural elites that dominate both parties: The progressive professional class on the Democratic side and libertarian plutocrats on the Republican.
For that reason, whether Trump decides to stand with Sean O’Brien or Jeff Bezos will play a major role in defining his legacy and the future of his party.