American politics feels hopelessly broken. Extreme political polarization, enormous amounts of Pac money sloshing around during elections, and the increasing power of the rich make it seem like nothing, and no one, can set the country on the right track. But a new report from the Center for Working-Class Politics looks at a surprisingly simple way that ordinary people might have more influence in our political system: run more union members for office.
The forthcoming CWCP report, co-authored by Jared Abbott, Benjamin Y Fong, Fred DeVeaux, Dustin Guastella and Sam Zacher, and sponsored by Arizona State University’s Center for Work and Democracy, looked at the broad political impact of political candidates with a labor union background. We found that candidates who come out of the union movement are exactly what many people in the country desperately crave: politicians who sound like them, who advocate for working people, and who provide solutions that actually work to fix our broken system.
Unions have been involved in politics for a long time, but their influence is diminishing. Not because they are spending less but just because of the explosion of individual donor and independent expenditure spending over the past 20 years. In this environment, many unions have taken a highly defensive posture toward elections, almost exclusively limiting their support to incumbent politicians they view as less bad than the alternative. But this is misguided. Unions – which have long relied on the assumption that organized people can trump organized money – are overlooking their greatest political asset: their people.
Our work has shown that one of the main reasons people get turned off by politicians, and in particular Democratic party politicians, is that they just can’t relate to those candidates. And that’s for good reason. Our research finds that working-class candidates make up just 8%–14% of Democratic and 5%–8% of Republican congressional candidates, despite roughly half of Americans working in manual labor, service or clerical jobs. These numbers have barely budged since 2010, in stark contrast to gender and race, where Democrats have roughly doubled their share of female and non-white candidates over the same period. The vast majority of candidates, then, come from elite social circles, and they very often fail to impress working-class voters.
And here is exactly where candidates with a union background can make the difference. These candidates are not only more likely to come from the same or similar social worlds as the voters they seek to represent – they are also much more likely to talk about workplace issues and advocate pro-worker policies on the campaign trail. In fact, we found that union candidates invoked pro-worker themes 159% more than their non-union candidates. That’s a big deal, and it helps explain why these candidates resonate while elite candidates fail to connect.
Not only this, but once elected, these candidates actually follow through. We found that candidates with a union background backed progressive pro-worker legislation at much higher rates than their non-union counterparts, regardless of partisanship and even after we accounted for district political leanings and demographic effects. That kind of credibility, even against strong headwinds, can inspire confidence.
Finally, candidates and political officeholders with union backgrounds also prove to be more effective at actually advancing their issues. We spoke with a wide range of union politicians and candidates and found that their experience in the labor movement – wrangling different factions while fighting for a common contract objective – gave them a leg up in legislative negotiations. These leaders can spot anti-worker provisions a mile away and they try to make sure every piece of legislation looks out for the downstream effects on the little guy.
Unfortunately, we also find that union candidates are too few and far between. Right now, less than 5% of all congressional candidates between 2010 and 2022 reported any union-related background. In 2022, just 55 union candidates ran out of 1,200 total, and many of those had only weak ties or short tenures with unions. That needs to change.
According to our interviews, money is, not surprisingly, the biggest barrier. Like working-class candidates more broadly, most union candidates don’t have any way to support themselves while campaigning. The demands of the modern election campaign require round-the-clock attention incompatible with a typical job. Fixing this means finding new ways to protect union members who want to run – for instance, through contract provisions holding their jobs – and new means to fund these candidates so they have the freedom to run.
The good news is that some labor federations are working to do exactly that. In places like New Jersey and Alaska, labor candidate programs have grown into successful political projects. The New Jersey AFL-CIO Labor Candidate Program trains and runs about 50 union-member candidates each year. According to its leaders, the program boasts an impressive 75% win rate. Meanwhile, the Alaska AFL-CIO Allman Labor Candidate School, founded in 2022, has already run about 12 candidates with a 66% win rate.
Those numbers ought to be encouraging for those who care about workers’ issues, and they suggest that the labor movement as a whole ought to invest much more heavily in these kinds of programs. As the former US representative Andy Levin of Michigan pointed out: “Unions spend millions on campaigns. What if they put 2% into getting their members elected?”
And these salutary effects wouldn’t just redound to union members or their organizations. Just as it’s the case that high union density in any given area means better average wages and working conditions for all workers, getting union candidates elected would help address worker interests regardless of whether voters hold a union card.
As our previous research has shown, working-class Americans of all political persuasions want candidates who can relate to them on a social level, who focus on the economy, jobs, and workplace issues, and who are credible leaders in their communities. The labor movement is full of those kinds of people. We just need to make it possible for more of them to run.
