Unions Won’t Make Themselves Red

The hegemonic approaches to labor organizing within DSA all base themselves around a truism: unions are, inherently, a radical and radicalizing force within capitalist society. All other questions of strategy and tactics we have formulated flow downstream from this. But as scientific socialists, we must leave no assumption unexamined.

Unions are not inherently a force radicalizing workers toward anti-capitalism, and the actions of unions are not always in the interest of the international working class. Socialists do ourselves a disservice by failing to contend with union members’ complex set of motives and incentives, and how those interests can conflict with the aims of the socialist movement.

This has led DSA to two politically passive approaches to labor organizing. First, union tailism, where we support actions and campaigns that unions are already doing in hopes of increasing their numbers and political power, with the goal of eventually convincing them of socialism through proximity. And second, union reformism, where we attempt to make unions more democratic today while shrinking away from political issues, with the hope that one day in the future, workers will be open to talking about socialism.

Both of these strategies continue to fail to bring the labor movement and the socialist movement any closer together. Both fail to move unions beyond the narrow pursuit of their members’ short-term economic interests. Both fail to push beyond the limited paths of legalism the state has laid out for them toward a true synthesis of radicalism and militancy. And both fail to reckon with the broader problems of US imperialism as the central question for both the labor and socialist movements. If we want unions to be vehicles for developing socialist militants, and to become weapons to wield against the capitalist state, we as socialists must explicitly, intentionally, and unapologetically build them to be.

DSA is currently navigating the tensions between the trade union movement’s tactics and our dire political moment on autopilot; sticking to the same politically passive strategies — tailism and reformism — without seriously tackling their politics and contradictions. We need to start scientifically evaluating our labor strategy beyond organizing around trade unions as a default. Instead, we need to consider the role of the working class, and not the NLRA-era trade union movement, as the revolutionary subject and examine unions and their contradictions through that lens.

Union Tailism in DSA

In DSA, we often find ourselves waiting for unions to kick off a campaign, and then tag along. The PRO Act phone banking campaign, run by the Green New Deal Campaign Commission, came after unions signaled they would be building pressure for the bill after Biden’s election. By its very nature, the Strike Ready campaign to support the UPS strike was dependent on the Teamsters calling a strike. Luckily, when they didn’t, serendipitous timing allowed the campaign to pivot to supporting the UAW’s strike on the Big Three.

In all of these cases, we aren’t fighting on our terms. Instead, we followed labor unions’ action and messaging and worked to build them up. This isn’t to say all of these projects were all unequivocally bad. However, tailing labor unions is a common through line throughout many, if not the majority, of DSA’s labor projects.

Union tailism is centered around following organized labor’s messaging and actions, with the assumed idea that having bigger and more militant trade unions in the United States brings us closer to socialism. However, tailist actions lead us to navigating the political moment on autopilot, disregarding the tensions between trade union’s chosen strategies and the current moment.

May Day 2028

“It’s time we reclaimed May Day for the working class.” UAW President Shawn Fain has turned heads by proposing a 2028 May Day General Strike as a chance for the working class to build collective power towards goals like universal healthcare and higher standards of living. In particular, he invokes the holiday’s radical origins as a bloody fight for the 8-hour work day to inspire members to join the fight… by aligning contract expiration dates, which is tantamount to struggling for permission from the bosses and the state to strike.

DSA is particularly caught up in the excitement. Several resolutions on plans involving the 2028 General Strike have been submitted to the upcoming DSA National Convention. Over 50 labor unions, reform caucuses, and other labor organizations have been invited to observe the Convention and to build ties with DSA in the lead up to May Day 2028.

However, Fain’s callbacks to past radicalism don’t line up with the actual tactic of aligning contracts. The main call for the May Day 2028 strike being aligning contracts represents the reality of a liberal trade unionism bound to procedural strategies. The rotting, legalistic foundations of modern US trade unionism are threatening to buckle, and yet, we’re still relying on that footing to mount a threat to capital.

On top of that, the Trump admin-capital alliance is making it challenging to even maintain the nadir of organized labor. The Trump administration has done everything from stripping collective bargaining rights from a million federal workers to nullifying a key part of the legal labor apparatus. However, even before Trump took a sledgehammer to legal unionism, trade union membership had continued to decline from its peak, leaving less than 10% of US workers represented by unions, with union membership largely concentrated in a few states.

In planning and strategizing around May Day 2028, DSA needs to keep the gulf between contract alignment and the current moment front of mind. We also need to recognize as we plan for May Day 2028, as mentioned above, that union density is still abysmally low and geographically concentrated.

Radicalism vs. Militancy

In building unions and their capacity to take on fights, we’re making these unions larger and more militant, with the idea that more fighting unions brings us closer to socialism. However, a union that’s willing to fight for improved pay and conditions for its workers does not necessarily work towards the same goals as DSA.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) representing port workers on the East Coast is an example of a militant union that was able to organize and pull off a large strike last October that stopped billions of dollars worth of trade. The ILA also has a long-standing policy to keep loading US weapons bound to places like Israel during strikes. In contrast, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) representing workers on the West Coast, particularly ILWU local 10 in San Francisco, has a long history of supporting anti-apartheid and anti-war efforts through radical labor action. Militancy alone does not move us towards a socialist horizon.

Similarly, studying American labor history shows that the heights of US union membership were not immune to anti-working class politics. Domestically, many unions and their members were willing participants in McCarthyism and successfully killed most left-wing unions in the United States, with only the ILWU and United Electrical, DSA’s partner in the labor movement, barely surviving, albeit severely weakened. Internationally, the AFL and then the AFL-CIO spent the 1940s through 1990s collaborating with capitalists to prop up dictatorships, crush communist movements, and support privatization and free-market reforms.

Being in a union might heighten conflict with a particular boss, which is a start. However, to actually advance socialist politics and move beyond negotiating wages and benefits, workplace conflicts must be connected with the broader working class struggle against the capitalist state, and the boss must be delineated as a class enemy.

Union Reformism in DSA

The other major labor strategy in DSA is union reformism. Union reformism focuses on building broad coalitions to contest leadership elections (often termed as rank and file caucuses) to restructure unions to be more democratic and member-led; therefore, making them more militant and safeguarding them against class collaborating union leadership. The most notable rank and file caucuses that DSA promotes are Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) in the Teamsters and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) in the United Auto Workers. Kim Moody’s pamphlet “The Rank and File Strategy” is one of the main inspirations for DSA’s emphasis on union reformism. The thesis of the piece is that socialism is unpopular and socialists are separated from workers. Therefore, we need to build a strong, democratic trade union movement first using “transitional organizations” like Labor Notes and intra-union movements like reform caucuses, while shying away, if not suppressing outright, any mention of socialism. Per Moody, only once US workers are fighting for themselves can their struggles be turned towards broader politics.

In DSA, union reformism is often brought up, for example in our 2023 NLC Consensus Resolution, as part of “working to give them a ‘class struggle’ orientation”. In practice, as demonstrated by UAWD and TDU, union reformism's main achievement has been to draw out the contradictions of union democracy, not the contradictions between the working class and the capitalist class. TDU and UAWD have very little to say on what members should be working towards outside improved union structures for the rank and file. Union reformism fails to recognize that having a democratic union isn’t the same as having a radical union, which brings members into the international struggle against the capitalist class.

As an example, Teamsters for a Democratic Union is one of the longest lasting and most lauded examples of union reformism. However, TDU-endorsed Teamsters president Sean O’Brien has repeatedly cozied up to the Trump administration, even going so far as suggesting collaborating with Republicans on right to work laws. TDU has won reforms under O’Brien, but does not levy criticism against O’Brien’s collaboration with capitalists because he is a vital part of their strategy for union reform. This stems from TDU intentionally avoiding any level of politics, as to avoid “convert[ing] TDU into a political vehicle,” even though this apoliticism hurts themselves and the labor movement at large. With TDU’s current orientation, if the Teamsters carry forward fascist class collaboration, seemingly it’s no problem to TDU as long as they get more internal reforms.

Similarly, UAWD-endorsed President Shawn Fain has supported Trump's tariffs as an attempt to bring back jobs to the US without recognizing the harms they’ll bring to the working class in target countries and in the US, even if some union jobs come back. Fain’s position is that we need to both show solidarity with workers abroad and bring their jobs back to the US. In his statements, Fain is careful to qualify that the tariffs alone will not fix these issues, but he continues to endorse them all the same.

In the end, UAWD dissolved itself over questions surrounding the reform caucus’ political scope. The majority of the caucus leadership recommended dissolution, stating the caucus is “...constantly engaged in insular debate that distracts from the work of building the union.” As one UAWD member who supported the majority puts it, “I assumed UAWD was like Labor Notes—getting activists together… They treated it more like a political party.”

The majority also cites long quarterly meetings, conflict between members, and slowing recruitment as reasons for shutting down the organization. However, these are problems that experienced union organizers and DSA members have all dealt with before and should be equipped to handle. They are not problems that a “new network of reform activists, to be called UAW Member Action” is inherently going to sidestep. The major difference between UAWD and the new organization being spun up is that the resources are housed in a body more focused on internal UAW issues, avoiding thorny issues the UAWD was considering like the genocide in Palestine or their relationship to Shawn Fain.

Not all rank and file caucuses are dedicated solely to union reformism. The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) in the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is often listed alongside TDU and UAWD as a rank and file caucus success story and also contains a number of DSA members; however, CORE has a fundamentally different history from those other caucuses. CORE was explicitly founded to fight against neoliberal school reform in Chicago. For CORE, reforming the union was not a strategy in itself, but a means to fight against school closures and other harmful local policies. As such, CORE’s tactics have expanded to enacting broader political change through its contract bargaining, such as housing for families in need, as well as getting involved in local politics, albeit to mixed success.

Centering Class Struggle in our Labor Approach

The contradictions in DSA’s primary labor strategies don’t mean that DSA should devolve into crude sectarianism, making aggressive screeds against union leadership its primary tactic. This strategy fails to acknowledge the rank and file as having a complex composition of politics and orientation towards leadership. Similar to tailism and union reformism, sectarianism is a more vulgar approach predicated on “one simple trick” to awaken the working class into struggling against capitalists, flattening the many complex and contradictory characteristics of the rank and file and of union leadership in the process. Sectarian tactics have had a relatively marginal impact on the labor movement itself. If anything, their most notable outcome has been encouraging the rest of the left to overcorrect into leaving politics out of their labor strategies entirely.

DSA needs to develop a labor strategy centered around moving the working class towards a horizon of revolutionary politics and building the organization needed to take advantage of capitalism’s inevitable crises and decay towards fascism. This approach recognizes the revolutionary position of the working class in society, and that until capitalism is wholly replaced with socialism, there will always remain some form of capitalist domination over the working class. This will require socialists involved in labor work – whether in existing unions, new organizing, or other formations engaging with Labor Councils or labor coalitions – to lead with socialist politics and not just a vision for democratically-run unions. Many elements of such a vision are part of what Joe Burns describes as “class struggle unionism” in his book of the same name. Burns articulates a labor strategy that centers the working class as the revolutionary class, and a vision of unions that fight for rank and file control of the shop floor through worker-led militancy. In addition, he expresses the need for unionism that fights for the whole working class, and to confront racism and sexism as part of the class struggle. And the working class Burns describes is not just the American working class or the American trade unions: Burns is critical of the history of the AFL-CIO’s anticommunist crusades (documented at great length in Jeff Schuhrke's Blue Collar Empire). This outlook, which articulates the contradictions within the working class movement more deeply than workers against bosses (or workers against bureaucrats), should be the starting point of a socialist labor politics in the United States.

The task of a revolutionary party is to develop and direct its members into being leaders who can bring the working class into more direct conflict with the capitalist class. In moments of revolutionary upheaval, the ability of the party to sustain and direct the struggle against the ruling class is decisive. DSA should consider the sufficiency of its trade union strategies to this task, and not take them as a given. In pursuit of this goal, DSA should do the following:

Approach the labor movement, and especially intra-union issues, from a scientific socialist perspective. This means understanding the specific contradictions involved in every conflict, discussing the outcomes of collective actions in real terms rather than cliches, and avoiding one-size approaches to labor organizing. Union leadership (both formal and informal) and union rank and file have a complex and dialectical relationship. The rank and file can move leadership and direct them towards good politics, and the leadership can do the same with the rank and file.
Act as a political center within the labor movement, leading with our politics and working to spread and develop them within the labor movement. In particular, DSA should be producing outward facing political education to move workers beyond narrow economic interests and nationalism and view themselves as political actors and members of the international working class.
Recognize that tactics purely centered around formally organized labor unions, especially in regions with next to zero union density, have serious limitations and DSA should seriously explore other strategies to reach workers. Trade unions – especially given both the limitations and political precarity of the NLRA – are not a one size fits all solution.
Strive to build union relationships based on our end goal of building socialism – including an anti-imperialist lens that foregrounds the need for solidarity with the workers of the world against the interests of our own ruling class. Solidarity campaigns like strike support can be useful in building strategic partnerships, but they are not enough to align the long-term goals of unions and the socialist movement, either locally or nationally.
Emphasize labor work that confronts the class position of Americans, even working-class ones, atop a global system of imperialism that sustains and is sustained by a globe-spanning economic and military dominance. The NLC’s recently-announced Labor for an Arms Embargo campaign is a step in this direction, and exemplifies an approach that places DSA in closer contact not just with fellow workers through shop floor organizing but with international solidarity movements as well.

Labor organizing, whether in formal trade unions or otherwise, has an important role in revolutionary politics. However, trade unions alone are not a sufficient revolutionary vehicle to establish the dominance of the working class. Socialists need to turn anger and frustration with the boss into conflict against the capitalist political system. Socialists need to unify militant union and non-union workers across industries and across artificial trade union turfs, which reinforce trade parochialism. Ultimately, we believe that the task of building towards socialism cannot be done exclusively by trade unions. Rather, building the vanguard party is the only way to durably connect the currently disparate parts of the US Left, including elements in the labor movement. Unions won’t make themselves red. However, DSA can bring workers into the fight against the capitalist class.

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