More Evidence That Organized Labor Is Progressivism, and Progressivism Is Organized Labor

Some on the right will try very hard to see daylight between organized labor and the progressive movement. Despite decades of decline in union membership, culminating in a record-low membership rate last year, some still see political opportunity in rejecting conservatives’ traditional approach to organized labor in favor of a more conciliatory approach.

Organized labor doesn’t see it that way, and it continues to fund the panoply of progressive institutions. Organized labor is progressivism, and progressivism is organized labor.

Michael Watson of the Capital Research Center provides more evidence of this from his survey of the latest spending disclosures unions file with the Department of Labor each year. The reason unions have to file these disclosures is the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959, which was passed in accordance with one of the tenets of the conservative approach to organized labor: transparency. Unions opposed the bill, but union corruption had become so obvious that it passed Congress with near unanimous support and was signed into law by President Eisenhower anyway.

Because of that law, we can see how unions spend their money. It’s to be expected that public-sector unions and famously progressive unions, such as the SEIU, will be giving to progressive causes and organizations. Watson substantiates that with this year’s reports. But it’s important to note that the supposedly less political, “blue-collar” unions are also giving big bucks to progressive causes.

Watson reports:

• “The Laborers International Union of North America (LiUNA), which organizes construction workers, funds the immigrant-advocacy coalition CARECEN, the charitable arm of the left-of-center NAACP, the National Democratic Club, and the Union Sportsmen’s Alliance, an environmentalist coalition that was created as left-wing outlet to draw support away from the National Rifle Association.”
• “The Bricklayers’ Union tossed a cool half-million to the 2024 Democratic National Convention organizing committee Development Now for Chicago; $5,000 to the National Democratic Institute, a left-leaning foreign policy group; and $94,500 to Union Sportsmen’s Alliance.”
• “The United Auto Workers, through its ‘CAP Councils’ (CAP standing for Community Action Program), sent money to local NAACP chapters (including six figures to Detroit’s), state Democratic Parties, and the left-wing think tank Roosevelt Institute.”
• “The Carpenters and Joiners union—in addition to funding a number of state, local, and national Democratic Party committees—put $1 million into the Democratic-aligned National Redistricting Foundation, $25,000 into left-wing advocacy coalition ProgressNow, and $20,000 toward the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.”
• “The United Steelworkers sent $148,560 to Make the Road New York, an immigration-liberalization and generally left-wing coalition in New York City.”
• The Teamsters “use the Democratic Party and Democracy Alliance–aligned data firm Catalist, to which the union paid $115,540 for ‘strategic plan’ services in 2023. The Teamsters also sent six figures to State Innovation Exchange, a left-wing state-level policy shop. And the Teamsters paid Berlin Rosen, the public relations firm created by allies of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) that is used extensively by the SEIU, nearly $1.2 million for its services in 2023.”

After he flip-flopped on right-to-work and posted Teamsters talking points on X, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) received $5,000 from the Teamsters. Nationally, in the 2022 election cycle, the Teamsters PAC donated $1.28 million to Democrats. It donated $30,000 to Republicans.

The Teamsters also gave $150,000 to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, “a ballot-measure research and advocacy nonprofit that strategizes ballot campaigns for left-of-center interests,” Watson writes. “It and its charitable arm are funded by Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice, the Arabella Advisors–managed North Fund, the JPB Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Susan T. Buffett Foundation, among other left-wing institutions.”

These findings “confirm the vast majority of the available evidence holding that labor unions, regardless of their sector represented or the social class of their members, align with the Everything Leftist ideology that dominates the liberal movement and the Democratic Party,” Watson writes. If you understand labor unions to be groups that represent workers in contract negotiations, this might seem confusing. If you understand labor unions to be just another part of the progressive movement, this seems natural and obvious.