As corporations go woke, it’s understandable that some on the right would look to unions as a possible bulwark. But it’s not that simple.
As corporations go woke, it’s understandable that some on the right would look to unions as a possible bulwark. But it’s not that simple.
O ne can forgive conservatives for feeling a bit of whiplash. American business, long the key funder and rock-ribbed ally of the Republican Party and the conservative movement that uses the GOP as its imperfect electoral vehicle, now seems captive to the fads of radical social liberalism, with classic American brands such as Disney, Major League Baseball, and Coca-Cola taking the left-progressive or Democratic Party sides of major cultural issues.
Combine these developments with changing patterns of political support in the working classes — especially the white working class — and it is a recipe for conservatives to reconsider their longstanding opposition to organized labor. Some simply condemn major businesses’ operating practices, especially on employee management and overseas production. Others — most notably Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) — have sought to position organized labor as a vehicle to protect workers against a potential future “requirement that the workers embrace management’s latest ‘woke’ human resources fad.”
These sentiments have led these conservative thinkers and policy-makers to promote union-organizing campaigns, especially those targeting Amazon. But amid the concern over corporate politicking, the question must be raised: Are unions really a solution to the problems of woke capitalism?
Unions’ statements surrounding the leaked opinion suggesting the Supreme Court may be prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade are not encouraging. Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO denounced the opinion. Mary Kay Henry of the SEIU expressed horror that an “extremist, anti-woman majority of the Supreme Court” (that, it should be noted, is suspected to include a woman) would threaten “a woman’s fundamental right to an abortion.” And Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America demanded that her members’ bosses “stand with us and for equality, anti-discrimination, and mutual respect.”
But those are representatives of Big Labor, which even the union-curious on the right admit is intimately tied to the broader liberal agenda. Maybe the platoons of “little labor,” like the Workers United–backed campaign unionizing Starbucks coffee shops, or the independent union organizing Amazon-warehouse workers in New York, are closer to what legendary labor leader Samuel Gompers called “purely industrial or economical class organizations with less hours and more wages for their motto.” Spoiler alert: They aren’t.
Starbucks Workers United is aligned with Workers United, a division of Henry’s SEIU that owns a substantial stake in Amalgamated Bank, a major financial institution for the Democratic Party, Democratic-aligned PACs, and other liberal organizations that openly pursue a woke-capitalist mission. Given those associations, it shouldn’t be surprising that the union tweeted, “All of us in the labor movement must fight for our abortion rights” in response to the leaked opinion.
And while the Amazon Labor Union is (for now) not affiliated with a national union (though its leaders met with the Teamsters Union president to discuss possible aid), it took to the streets in support of the Roe–Casey abortion-access regime. The ALU shared a post by Brett Daniels, an ALU organizer, which stated that “the Amazon Labor Union were among those community organizations involved in the rally/discussion for next steps in defending abortion & lgbtq+* [sic] rights!” The post further included pictures of a radical-left rally for “Free, Safe, Legal Abortion on Demand” and “Free Legal Abortion-Free Public Healthcare,” in case one wondered where Daniels’s sympathies lay. Opponents of Amazon’s announcement that it would subsidize its employees’ abortion travel will have to look elsewhere for institutional support.
Organized labor’s demonstrations of complete alignment with the left-progressive social agenda illustrate the scale of the problem labor conservatives have yet to confront. Labor unions big and little, private-sector and public-sector, blue-collar and white-collar alike are enmeshed in a system known as “social-justice unionism,” in which economic social democracy is but one component of a wider left-progressive agenda on matters as divergent as abortion, transgender activism, environmentalism, and gun control. Those who would increase labor unions’ power in the name of conservatism owe other conservatives some sort of practical plan to ensure that their honorable concern for worker welfare will not lead to a strengthening of conservatives’ enemies.