The results of the November 2024 election show that the authoritarian right has built a significant social base. They have consolidated their core sectors among substantial parts of capital, white nationalists, Evangelical Christians, “America firsters,” “law-and-order” voters, and more. They are now successfully experimenting with peeling away sectors that should be central to the base of the labor and progressive movements, including some in the multiracial working class. The Right is constructing broad fronts to win electoral majorities. While their coalition is unstable internally, it will take intense strategic campaigns among labor and progressives to expose and take advantage of those contradictions. 

　　The Democratic Party, anchored by the broader US liberal center, clearly cannot address the multiple crises in the country and world. In the November elections, the Democrats showed increasing weakness among the multiracial working class, including an inability to connect with tens of millions of working-class people who chose not to vote. The party is increasingly out of touch, defending an economy that is failing working people and aiding genocide in Palestine. In this context, the Democrats have created the conditions for many voters to see MAGA as the agent of change. 

　　In the coming years, defeating MAGA authoritarianism must be US labor’s main objective, embedded within a long-term strategy to fight for multiracial democracy and an economy in which working-class people thrive. I propose that labor adopt an intensified “block and build” approach. 

　　“Blocking” means organizing broad labor, community, and political alliances against authoritarianism, fighting tooth and nail against attacks on democratic rights, and vigorously defending the most vulnerable. “Building” means massively expanding a social base and movement infrastructure that will fight authoritarianism long-term and build campaigns for multiracial democracy and an economy that radically departs from the corporate-driven, unequal model that has dominated since the 1970s. 

　　This objective comes in the context of efforts by Trump and MAGA forces to bring some unions more formally into the Right’s coalition, which echoes similar efforts by racist authoritarians throughout history. Trump has met directly with some union leaders, plans to appoint a tepidly pro-labor Republican for labor secretary, uses Right populist language, and is floating ideas on mild social democratic measures (though the proposals are often nativist and discriminatory) that will appeal to some workers. 

　　A critical component of an intensified block and build strategy within labor must be constructing a new vision in which the US labor movement is unapologetically fighting for the entirety of the multiracial working class, not just currently unionized workers. Though Trump will dramatically weaken the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and more employers will engage in anti-union campaigns, this is not the time for hunker-down unionism, in which we try to weather a four-year storm by hoping for a better day. 

　　This is a time to shift union strategies, not only because of worsening economic conditions and the crises that Trump and the MAGA movement present, but also because of opportunities: a majority of nonunion workers say they would join a union if given the chance; a substantial majority of voters support unions; organizing-focused leadership has won in the United Auto Workers (UAW), many educator unions, and in more sectors; and there is an openness among more union leaders to an organizing approach. While we will need to establish priorities and make some difficult tactical choices, our overall orientation must be bold, aggressive, and unapologetic in seeking to change the world. 

　　Tactically for labor, intensified blocking means investing more in community and political relationships to build the broad antiauthoritarian front necessary to defend democratic rights and the most vulnerable. It means connecting with unions internationally for lessons on fighting authoritarianism, working with emergency response networks, and fighting for and filling gaps in local, regional, and state protections in support of reproductive justice, and against white supremacist actions, deportation of immigrants, and attacks on the LGBTQ community. It means demonstrating a commitment for all to see: that union workers, with boots on the ground, at women’s health clinics, at neighborhood defense picket lines, at LGBTQ and immigration centers, at anti-police brutality actions, and in the community, are leading in defending rights. 

　　Regarding offensive tactics, intensified building for labor means strengthening our organizations and promoting a new vision for society. Both must be founded upon building power in measurable ways. This means dramatically expanding the number of people involved (having 11 percent of US workers in unions does not give us anywhere near enough power), strengthening alliances, and increasing the reach and resonance of our vision. 

　　Working with community groups has been a consistent weak point for US labor. That must change. For example, UTLA would not have been able to shift power relations in Los Angeles schools without a methodical and collaborative two-and-a-half-year process that initiated Reclaim Our Schools LA with three anchor community organizations. Since the coalition’s launch in December 2016, UTLA has granted $75,000 per year to each anchor organization to staff their respective education work with Reclaim and to help them build their own independent organizational bases. 

　　The work of the Reclaim coalition as a whole has been central in collaborative strategic planning, common-good bargaining, striking, winning school board resolutions, and supporting labor/community coalitions across the country. It is only through intentional work with community that labor will be able to build a multifaceted working-class movement. 

　　Regarding vision, the perspective labor puts forward must be developed with community organizations and offer an analysis of the recent election — the destructive impacts of racism, misogyny, transphobia, and xenophobia in the election; the economic suffering of the multiracial working class; and the profound alienation of tens of millions of working-class voters. Our vision for society must explain why economic inequality exists, identify corporate and billionaire enemies, and pick fights. It must be based on meeting immediate material needs, justice, anti-oppression, economic redistribution, democratic rights, climate justice, a cease-fire in Gaza, and international peace. 

　　This is not the Democratic Party’s vision. The party’s corporate and billionaire funders, and its defense of economic inequality and militarism, including the genocidal war in Gaza, are structural barriers to the party advancing this vision. We need independent electoral vehicles. Yet while we are building these, we must at times be in tactical alliance with the Democratic Party in the fight against MAGA authoritarianism, working together toward specific goals based on time, place, and conditions. 

　　Many of us did exactly this in campaigning for Kamala Harris in the recent election. This approach is particularly important in the US South and Southwest. Yet while in these tactical alliances, we must be intentional about our organizations remaining clearly and publicly distinct from and frequently critical of the Democratic Party — while simultaneously exposing the contradiction between the Right’s limited appeals to workers and its authoritarian and billionaire-driven program. Finding the correct approach for this tactical alliance work with the Democratic Party, while simultaneously building independent electoral vehicles and promoting political education on the approaches of the two major parties, is going to require debate within our movement and careful, collective decision-making within and across organizations. 

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  Deng Panyi 

　　From:https://jacobin.com/2024/12/utla-labor-trump-authoritarianism-unions 

　　 (2024-12-19)