unions

In the coming years, defeating MAGA authoritarianism must be US labor’s main objective, embedded within a long-term strategy to fight for multi-racial democracy and an economy in which working-class people thrive. I propose that labor adopt an intensified “Block and Build” approach. 

“Blocking” means organizing broad labor, community, and political alliances against authoritarianism, fighting tooth-and-nail against attacks on democratic rights, and vigorously defending the most vulnerable. “Building” means massively expanding a social base and movement infrastructure that will fight authoritarianism long-term and build campaigns for multi-racial democracy and an economy that radically departs from the corporate-driven, unequal model that has dominated since the 1970s.  

This objective comes in the context of efforts by Trump and MAGA forces to bring some unions more formally into the Right’s coalition, which echoes similar efforts by racist authoritarians throughout history. Trump has met directly with some union leaders, plans to appoint a tepidly pro-labor Republican for labor secretary, uses Right populist language, and is floating ideas on mild social democratic measures (though the proposals are often nativist and discriminatory) that will appeal to some workers.

A critical component of an intensified Block and Build strategy within labor must be constructing a new vision in which the US labor movement is unapologetically fighting for the entirety of the working class, not just currently unionized workers. Though Trump will dramatically weaken the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and more employers will engage in anti-union campaigns, this is not the time for hunker-down unionism, in which we try to weather a four-year storm by hoping for a better day.

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