Democrats have lost the working class in large part because they put unions over workers. Republicans shouldn’t make the same mistake.
Democrats have lost the working class in large part because they put unions over workers. Republicans shouldn’t make the same mistake.
I t’s not just Democrats. A growing number of Republicans don’t get Donald Trump’s appeal to working Americans, either. They think the president’s electoral victories show that workers want Republicans to back labor unions. In fact, working-class voters overwhelmingly supported Trump because he stands for opportunity and patriotism — not union power.
Senator Josh Hawley is the latest and loudest Republican to miss the message. On March 4, he introduced a bill that can only be described as pro-union. It’s the most aggressive Republican effort yet to prop up unions, mandating an aggressive schedule for contract negotiations that gives unions the advantage. The federal government could also force collective bargaining agreements on workers if an agreement isn’t reached. For Republicans, giving unions even more power over workers is unprecedented territory.
The Missouri senator and his right-of-center allies clearly hope that throwing the GOP’s weight behind unions will seal the deal for working-class voters, making them a permanent part of the Republican coalition. But Hawley and other pro-union Republicans need to step back and look at why working-class Americans really stand with Donald Trump.
The first thing they fail to understand is that Trump appeals to workers because of his big-picture vision. In 2016, 2020, and 2024, the president spoke to workers’ desire for job security and prosperity. He recognized that workers were pessimistic about the country’s future, so he promised a new era of optimism and opportunity.
He kept that promise in his first term. America had a booming economy that created more manufacturing jobs, historic wage gains, and record-low unemployment. His second-term agenda of permanent tax cuts and a smaller regulatory state are designed to deliver even greater benefits, though tariffs may complicate things. Regardless, Trump’s vision of opportunity has stood in stark contrast to Democrats’ reality of economic decline — decline driven in part by union power. No wonder working Americans have rallied to him.
Trump also spoke to the working class’s nationalism and patriotism — values that Democrats abandoned long ago. He clearly aligns with working Americans’ values by opposing things like biological boys who claim to be girls competing in girls’ sports and racial discrimination in the name of “equity.” While the president’s promise of better jobs and bigger paychecks appealed the most to the working class, this promise of common sense and cultural cohesion worked, too. But unions are once again on the other side, often supporting radical causes like DEI, transgenderism, and anti-American propaganda.
These political realities prove the pointlessness of Josh Hawley’s attempts to empower unions. But there’s another reality that he and every Republican needs to understand. Donald Trump has consistently won the working class — even after rolling back union power.
Donald Trump’s first term saw a slew of policies that weakened unions while strengthening workers. He made it easier for workers to become independent contractors with the flexible schedules and contracts that unions hate. He appointed National Labor Relations Board members who limited union intimidation and harassment of workers. And Trump promised to veto the labor movement’s top priority — the so-called PRO Act, which would have taken away workers’ right to secret ballot elections, among other infringements of their rights.
The fact that working-class voters still supported Donald Trump proves that they don’t want unions to have more power over their jobs, their wages, and their futures. Workers want to take their future into their own hands — a future of the opportunity, prosperity, and patriotism that unions consistently oppose.
Pro-union Republicans like Josh Hawley need to wake up. They should realize that while Donald Trump reaches out to unions — most notably by inviting the head of the Teamsters union to speak at the Republican National Convention last year — he’s never toed the union line. Just the opposite: The president has stood with workers, to the point of freeing them from union control. That’s why Donald Trump is more popular than ever with the working class.
If Republicans like Josh Hawley are smart, they’ll double down on worker freedom and end unions’ ability to control or coerce employees. Or Josh Hawley can keep trying to prop up unions like Democrats do — never realizing that Democrats have lost the working class in large part because they put unions over workers.