By Jonathan Weisman and Benjamin Oreskes
Beyond Kamala Harris’s campaign and its political action committees, very few economic or political entities invested as heavily as organized labor in the Vice President’s quest for the presidency.
And few are likely to experience more ramifications due to the forthcoming Trump administration. For public-sector unions representing government employees, the threats are institutional and existential: Senior advisers to President-elect Donald Trump aim to abolish them entirely.
For service industry unions that advocate for hotel and restaurant workers, the threats may directly impact the members: insecure and low-wage workers, frequently immigrants, who could be swept up in Trump’s anticipated mass deportations.
For the leaders of traditional industrial unions, the challenge comes from their own members, many of whom disregarded their leadership’s appeals and supported Trump.
“We acknowledge that we face significant challenges,” stated Lee Saunders, chair of the AFL-CIO’s political committee and president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which boasts 1.6 million members. “This has repercussions for the entire labor movement.”
Unions contributed nearly $43 million to the Harris campaign, as per Open Secrets, although this figure does not fully capture the extensive resources dedicated to phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, educational outreach, and efforts to engage nonunion working-class households.
Union leaders asserted after Trump’s victory that they fulfilled their responsibilities: Early exit polls indicated that Harris secured union households by 55% against Trump’s 43%, mirroring President Joe Biden’s numbers from 2020. In tightly contested Democratic Senate wins in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, as well as in the undecided Senate race in Arizona, union households could prove pivotal.
However, with unions comprising under 10% of the private-sector workforce, their true misstep was their failure to broaden their influence for Harris beyond their memberships to the significantly larger pool of working-class Americans who do not belong to any union, who turned out and largely voted for the former president.
“Working Americans chose President Trump because they trust him,” remarked Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, commented that voters feeling a sense of control over their lives — via higher education or union representation — had aligned with Democrats.
But, she noted, “those who sensed too much change, whether from technology, living costs, or fears about a transforming nation — they wanted a strongman for solutions,” and that strongman was Trump.
There are numerous factors contributing to Harris’ defeat, yet union leaders have been among the most vocal in asserting that she and other Democrats neglected the plights of workers. Jimmy Williams Jr., president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, a staunch Harris supporter, expressed on social media that Harris failed to effectively advocate for “what immigrant workers contribute to our nation,” which includes workers within his union.
Democrats were too sluggish to recognize the impacts of inflation, he argued. Moreover, they struggled to articulate the achievements of the Biden administration in areas like infrastructure jobs, manufacturing, and bringing semiconductor production back from abroad — all successes that may ultimately benefit Trump as those initiatives progress.
“The party did not present a compelling case for why workers should support them; they merely pointed out that they were not Donald Trump,” Williams stated regarding the Democrats. “That’s no longer sufficient.”
In Trump’s previous term, he appointed opponents of labor to the National Labor Relations Board, which restricted organizing efforts and staunchly resisted union-supported initiatives aimed at simplifying the process for workers to advocate for collective bargaining. His labor secretaries were equally unsupportive of unions.
However, during this campaign, he explicitly courted union workers, if not their leaders. He made grandiose promises to eliminate income tax on tips and overtime. More crucially, he pledged that imposing tariffs on nearly all imported goods would restore manufacturing jobs from overseas; that mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would liberate jobs for citizens; and that by revoking environmental regulations promoting electric vehicles and renewable energy, he would usher in a bygone era of muscle cars and oil rigs.
Furthermore, certain notable unions refrained from endorsing Harris, primarily because their members favored Trump. The Teamsters were particularly notable, with their president, Sean O’Brien, addressing the Republican convention and wanting to maintain a presence at Trump’s table should he win. He wasn’t alone in this sentiment.
The International Association of Fire Fighters, the International Longshoremen’s Association, and the United Mine Workers also opted out of the election — and if union leadership’s educational efforts genuinely helped secure most union households for Harris, the non-endorsement from these unions may have inadvertently benefited Trump.
Now, with Trump’s victory, leaders like O’Brien possess leverage to call in favors.
Leaders such as Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, who actively supported Harris, may face repercussions for their actions.
A resolute Fain declared in a statement: “It’s time for Washington, D.C., to deliver or remain silent, regardless of party or candidate. Will our government support the working class, or continue serving the interests of the wealthy?”
While leaders like Fain prepare for Trump’s well-known tendency for retaliation, service worker unions are getting ready for Trump’s policy pledges. In Nevada, unions like the Culinary Workers previously propelled Democratic candidates to victory in every election since 2004 — until this one.
Union officials might claim they significantly bolstered Harris’ support among their members; in Nevada, that was not the case. Recent polling of registered voters in Nevada indicated that Harris garnered only one percentage point more support from union members than Trump, 48% to 47%. In the same poll from 2020, Biden led Trump by 22 percentage points among union members in Nevada.
Now, Ted Pappageorge, leader of the immigrant-heavy Culinary Workers Local 226, expressed his concerns regarding Trump’s severe promises to mass-deport undocumented immigrants and seal the U.S.-Mexico border.
Harris’ “messaging was spot-on,” he commented. However, he suggested that Trump’s actions were akin to a manager trying to sabotage an organizing effort, and he had a significant advantage in time to execute it.
“She had a few months to address this, while Trump has been conducting what we call a ‘boss campaign’ for years, instilling fear and division,” Pappageorge concluded.
