Why All Democrats Must Support Unions

For a long time, supporting unions simply wasn’t a priority for Democrats. The entire generation of Democrats who came up in the 70s were at best ambivalent about unions. The Atari Democrats–the name given to people such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, and many others–were about tech, neoliberalism, and a social liberalism that had little place for unions. We saw this in how Carter, Clinton, and Obama all governed on labor issues, which was not great, though Obama got better in the second term as the tide shifted. This was disastrous for the long-term standing of the Democratic Party. When unions declined, so did solid blue working class voters. When unions declined, the institution most likely to push back on reactionary tendencies among workers died too. In other words, you as a Democrat should actively support the union movement regardless of how you personally feel about the economic questions involved because unions help Democrats get elected.
There’s a new report from CAP that is kind of general about this stuff, but still gets the point across to Democrats who might still be squishy about unions.
In addition to economic benefits, unions increase political participation, particularly voter turnout, in democracies. They help decrease the costs and increase the benefits of participation, so more people get involved. Unions achieve this in a number of ways—from simply knocking on doors and letting people know about an election to helping people get to the polls.
In addition, unions inform their members of the benefits of democratic participation, disclose which elected officials have provided the most support, and encourage members to vote for pro-worker politicians. Therefore, it is no surprise that research shows weakening unions lead to fewer working-class candidates serving in state legislatures and Congress.
While being a union member makes a person more likely to vote and participate in politics, unions also increase participation among nonmembers, as nonunion members are often the recipients of union efforts to educate and mobilize. For example, according to analysis by political scientists Benjamin Radcliff and Patricia Davis, unions help increase voter turnout rates across states. After applying relevant controls, a 1 percentage point increase in union density in a state increases voter turnout rates by 0.20 to 0.26 percentage points. In other words, if unionization were 10 percentage points higher during the 2020 presidential election, 3.1 million to 4 million more Americans would have voted.
They don’t apply partisan language to this, but we know that union members vote Democratic at higher rates than non-union members.
I’d also argue that union rights are just as much a moral question as abortion rights and gay rights, but if you wrongly don’t feel that way, it’s still in your interest on those issues to support a robust union movement.