Around 15 million workers are organized into unions in this country. Hundreds of millions more are in unions around the world. For over a hundred years unions have successfully fought to defend workers rights against the world the employers would prefer: low pay and high profits. Just as the bosses’ goals extend beyond the workplace, unions must also fight for the interests of the broader working class if they want to continue to be relevant. This must include fighting the rise of the right. 

All progress in this country is rooted in the struggle of movements. The militant ascent of the unions from the mid-1930s through the 1970s gave rise to broad economic progress for ordinary people, unparalleled since. 

The Unions And The Democrats

By the 1980s the bosses were no longer willing to concede reforms to unions. Strikes grew longer and harder and the defeated labor leaders concluded that going on strike was counterproductive. The chameleon-like Democrats abandoned their racist southern Dixiecrats and made an offer to the unions: if millions of union members knock doors for us, we will pass pro-labor laws. This eventually became, if unions phone-bank for us then things won’t get worse. However, things got worse. In the past 30 years the US has become dominated by billionaires for whom the economy is entirely shaped, and politicians almost unanimously have helped this happen. Not a single piece of pro-union legislation has been passed, or like the PRO Act, has become permanently stalled.  

This unsavory relationship between top Democrats and union leaders has made union members increasingly cynical about politics. It is also entirely understandable that many workers now think Trump might represent change. It was into this environment that Teamsters’ union leader Sean O’Brien stood up on stage at the Republican Party Convention in July and said that the unions should not be loyal to any single party. His implication was that the unions should be loyal to either of the two big business parties, siding with whoever offers the unions the best deal. Rather than clarify what has gone wrong with unions and politics for the past decades, O’Brien muddied the waters for union members about what is in the interests of working class people, and the role of the two parties of big business.

While unions backing Democrats has been a disaster, O’Brien lending credibility to politicians like Trump, can only worsen prospects for the labor movement. Trump and his extreme right Vice President nominee, JD Vance, are not a viable alternative for working class people. They represent a serious escalation of ideas that are extremely dangerous and divisive to working class people. Their victory would embolden the far right. 

The Far Right Emerges Again 

The far right are not content with undoing “woke” programs in public schools; they want to rewrite the balance of forces in this country against the working class. That means they want immigrants living in fear of deportation. They want to ban abortion. They want the police to be given the kind of powers that frees them to be as brutal as they see fit. And ultimately when people’s civil rights are seriously curbed, then they will go after the unions more directly. If organized labor stands back from this fight, it will be our last fight. 

The bosses have already made many gains in undermining the rights of public sector unions in so-called purple states in recent years. The unions relying on the Democrats has not worked to prevent this. The Democrats have overseen the economic fall of generations of working class people. It is no surprise that many workers either see both parties as the same or are open to the ideas of the right. 

The far right has risen in France, Germany and elsewhere. They have filled the void left by the failure of liberalism to pass reforms in workers’ interests. In the US, flat and falling living standards, declining schools, and rising rents, have created an undercurrent of anger looking for a solution. With Biden denying the suffering of working people, Trump and company are attempting to fill the vacuum by arguing for a return to a past when people were better off. And out of the side of their mouths, to their far right fringe elements, they argue that they also want a return to pre-civil rights America.

Activists Connecting To The Unions

As the far right comes out onto the streets, the working class must unite to defeat them. The courageous young activists who are willing to confront the right must call on the unions to support them. The labor movement, as a body of millions, represents the biggest, most organized and diverse force in the country: labor could easily sweep the far right from the streets. Appeals for the unions to fight against all attempts to turn the clock back on our rights would win broad sympathy.

Fighting the right does not mean backing the billionaires’ other party, the Democrats. It means fighting for an independent party for working class people in future elections. The millions of workers in the unions, along with their friends, families and communities should be mobilized to the streets in the event that the far right attempts to make any kind of show of strength against Black people, women, LGTBQ+ people or immigrants. This would show everyone the real balance of forces in society.

When Sean O’Brien, a leader with over many Latino workers, argues “America First”, this means two entirely different things to America’s billionaires than it does to a group of immigrant workers. Union leaders that are divisive need to be replaced. Union workers whose leaders are stuck in the past, who are more loyal to the employers than union members, should organize oppositions against such leaders, so as to fight for the greatest level of unity possible.

Workers will unite around demands that they recognize as necessary. Demands around higher pay, more secure jobs and better working conditions will tend to unite workers under the same roof. When union leaders point their megaphones at the wider working class, arguing for Medicare for All, free college education, super-tax the billionaires and for a $30/hr minimum wage, they would get a huge echo. Such demands can unify the working class and undermine the far right, specifically if the unions are absolutely clear that they defend the civil rights of all workers on and off the job.

Unity Is The Key To Progress

In this way, the far right can both be defeated and their pretense that they are in some way anti-establishment be exposed.  

Organized labor has a long tradition of fighting for issues that affect union members and workers as a whole off the job. Over 40,000 union members joined the historic March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King himself was killed while supporting the sanitation workers strike. The United Auto Workers (UAW) took a stand against the Vietnam war and more recently, pressed by members, the UAW endorsed a ceasefire in Gaza. 

During the 2020 George Floyd protests, Socialist Alternative union members led the struggle to refuse to allow public buses to be used by the police to ferry arrested protesters. At the same time unionized postal workers held a rally in Minneapolis after their post office was burnt to the ground, arguing that labor understands the anger and sides unequivocally with the fight against police brutality. Labor can defeat the right by creating the greatest unity of the working class. 

As long as capitalism exists, the lid will be episodically let off to let the far right roam the streets and sow division. The best way to put that lid back down is for labor to exercise its full power against the divisive far right. The most consolidated way to keep that pressure up, is for labor and working people to have their own anti-billionaire, anti-corporate political party. But for history to seal that lid so that the far right never rises again, we need to end capitalism and establish a working class society, a socialist society. And only a united working class can win this.