Americans are smart about spending money. They know what they want to invest in and, more importantly, what they don’t want to invest in. They generally don’t want to invest in politics.
Only about 30 million Americans made a political donation between 2006 and 2020, according to The Economist: that’s less than 10 percent of our population. Americans are happy to vote, and more than half of us do, but we don’t see the value of spending our hard-earned cash on politicos. Especially this April, as we close in on tax time, Americans feel that enough of their money goes to the government as it is.
However, many Americans—even those who make the least in salary—are being forced to contribute to political candidates. Often, candidates whom they oppose and even voted against. That’s because labor unions invest heavily in political campaigns, and almost always for Democrat candidates. And that isn’t fair, because it doesn’t reflect the views of the workers in those unions.
The Commonwealth Foundation reported that, of political spending by unions, “95.8% of donations for state-level candidates went toward Democrats. On the federal level, 98.8% of union donations went to Democrats.”
While a few union leaders made symbolic gestures toward Republicans, the reality is that they generally support Democratic candidates. This includes races across the country. In Alaska, “Rep. Nick Begich and Republicans in these battleground districts have repeatedly chosen greed over people, and our families are paying the price. They’re okay with walking away from us and letting us die,” Amy Backus, a member of SEIU 775, said in a news release. In Iowa, “We’re supporting candidates like Rob Sand who’ve proven they can stand up to corporate America,” UAW Region 4 Director Brandon Campbell said in a news release.
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That’s harsh rhetoric against candidates who earned plenty of votes from union members. Unions are also spending heavily. On the national stage, since 2020, unions have given Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) more than $700,000. Many union members dislike these Democrat leaders and vote against them.
All this means that union members are “unwittingly propping up left-leaning candidates and progressive causes like abortion, critical race theory, and defunding the police,” David Osborne, senior director of Labor Policy for the Commonwealth Foundation, said.
That is not fair. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, half of union voters told pollsters they would support Kamala Harris, while 43 percent said they would support Donald Trump, virtually an even split. It would seem that the money and the rhetoric should be even as well.
What were union members voting for? More efficient government, for sure. But labor unions staunchly oppose that. For example, union leaders have consistently tried to stop President Trump from making government work more efficiently.
“Donald Trump’s executive order launched the biggest act of union-busting in our history, ripping away collective bargaining rights from a million federal workers,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said after Trump imposed a good-government directive. She added, “President Trump betrayed workers when he tried to rip away our collective bargaining rights. In these increasingly polarized times, working people delivered a rare bipartisan majority to stop the administration’s unprecedented attacks on our freedoms.” Well, not exactly.
In reality, working people—especially those in unions—voted for good government, effective policies, an end to DEI and a recovery from wokeness. But their representatives in the union movement are spending time and money in ways the members never would. Indeed, union members have increasingly supported the President despite how their “leadership” would like them to vote. This week, in a disturbing – albeit unsurprising – turn of events, one of the nation’s most prominent railroad unions is under fire for “betraying its MAGA members” after a watchdog report shows how its leadership is fighting the President’s agenda. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen apparently feels no brotherhood towards its Trump- voting members.
On issue after issue, union leaders oppose the MAGA agenda that their members voted for. The way to appeal to rank-and-file union voters is to pursue policies that make the economy stronger, not to support legislative priorities and the agenda of inside-the-Beltway union bosses. No wonder union membership is plunging. Political activism has backfired. Union leaders should stop doing it and start representing their members.
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