For union activists, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's signing of a bill last week repealing a right-to-work law was a signal victory and a historic achievement. The law, which, like those that currently exist in 26 other states, prevented unions from forcing employees to join a union or pay dues to it in order to have a job. Naturally, unions have always regarded such legislation as an attack on their ability to organize, collectively bargain, and protect the rights of workers. More importantly, preventing right-to-work protections ensures a steady flow of funds into the coffers of a union movement that has been bleeding members for decades.
That's been true, even in Michigan, where the UAW—the auto workers' union that has now expanded to other industries—formed the activist heart of the movement, providing organizers, foot soldiers, and a bottomless well of campaign contributions for the Democratic Party. But after a sweeping victory in last year's midterm elections, Democrats found themselves back in control of both houses of the state legislature as well as the governor's office, where Gretchen Whitmer survived the blowback from her heavy-handed COVID regulations to win reelection.
Among the first items on Michigan Democrats' agenda was to reward their loyal union supporters by repealing the state's right-to-work law. Helping ensure the cash flow to their union donors makes sense and might even be good politics in Michigan—which remains bluer than many pundits assumed during the Trump era. But the notion that repealing right-to-work laws is the path to bringing working-class voters back to the Democrats is a mistake.
Michigan was, after all, home to the classic example of working-class crossover voters. It was Michigan's Macomb County that was the setting for liberal pollster Stan Greenberg's classic study of Democrats who had voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960 but who, by 1984, were voting by even larger margins for Ronald Reagan. The reason they abandoned the Democrats was that Republicans better reflected their values of patriotism, faith, and family.
Those Reagan Democrats are now just called Republicans. And no matter how much the Democrats seek to pay off the unions, that isn't going to change. When Democrats win elections, even in Michigan, it is because of their dominance among suburban middle- and upper-class voters who are far more interested in abortion than in ensuring that blue-collar Americans can support their families with manufacturing jobs.
Though members of the "inside the beltway" establishment of both parties have been slow to recognize it, American politics has been undergoing a realignment in recent years. Wall Street and its massive donors, once reliable supporters of the Republican Party, are now fully invested in the Democrats.
That's because many, perhaps most, of the players in big financial firms were trained in woke values in college and are now much more comfortable with the political Left. They also understand that, despite the growing influence of the intersectional and Marxist activist class among Democrats, their interests are better protected by a big government party that supports open borders to create a cheap work force and that will subsidize and bail them out when they fail, than one committed to liberty.
Repealing right-to-work laws hurts businesses and impacts their ability to employ more people. But that's more of a problem for small businesses, not the large corporations more likely to partner with big unions in ways that do ordinary workers little good.
By contrast, grassroots Republicans—as opposed to D.C. members of the uniparty establishment—may be opposed to the political agenda of the unions but back the values many of their members support. They are interested in protecting their jobs by defending America's borders and resisting a woke cultural revolution bent on the destruction of the patriotic, religious, and family values that working-class Americans are more likely to embrace.
And the unions are, like the rest of the Democratic base, fully invested in the woke Marxist agenda of indoctrinating children in gender theory and a racialized vision of America.
Moreover, while unions were once essential to protecting workers' rights against business interests that regarded them as chattel, most Americans, including those at the lowest rungs of the pay scale, understand that many unions are today mere auxiliaries of the Democratic Party that take far more than they give workers in return. There are still instances—such as companies like Amazon which exploit low-wage workers—where unions can play the role they played in the creation of a prosperous working class in early 20th-century America. But those are now the exceptions to the rule.
Those who have no choice but to send their kids to failing public schools also know that the teachers' unions—whose embrace of wokeness and damaging pandemic regulations hurt children in ways we're only beginning to understand—are obstacles to building a better life for their families. Being forced to contribute to these political activist organizations isn't as popular with the voters as Democrats may think.
What they need are politicians who stand up for American jobs against Wall Street interests. That's not today's Democratic Party. Democrats' gestures toward unions do more to firm up their leftist base than to advance the interests of minorities and lower-income Americans, who need more opportunities and less competition from unskilled immigrants.
Seen from that perspective, it's unlikely that the Michigan bill will spark a national trend of throwing out right-to-work laws. To the contrary, if Democrats want to win in 2024 with working-class votes, they need to confront the woke intersectional activists and the union bosses who now form their base. Republicans will continue to make progress with these voters, not by trying to out-bribe the Democrats with help to unions but by embracing the traditional values that ordinary Americans still cherish.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
