What is the connection between unions and democracy?
Democratic backsliding in the United States is a particular threat to labor unions. The research is clear: democracy is good for labor. Democracies not only provide more robust protections for freedom of association, they pay higher wages. Rollbacks in democracy have led to significant attacks on labor rights in India, Hungary, and elsewhere. Would-be authoritarians undermine the autonomy of outside organizations (such as unions) to centralize control over all the major organs of society.
In turn, labor unions have also played critical roles in advancing and protecting democracy. When labor unions push for democratic change, these movements tend to have much higher rates of success and long-term sustainability. These organizations already embody the skills and infrastructure needed to organize across difference, making them critical players in a pro-democracy ecosystem. They also bring high levels of public trust, an organized base with a capacity to mobilize, deep networks in local communities, clear channels for communicating action, and a capacity to exert economic leverage through noncooperation.
What can unions do to meet authoritarian threats?
- Bring their formidable organizing skills, experiences, and networks into the pro-democracy ecosystem.
- When the Civil Rights movement in Winston-Salem, North Carolina foundered, tobacco industry unions (led by Black workers) organized membership drives for the NAACP. The union built dense local networks among the Black working class through activities centered on the local union hall, and organized citizenship classes, political rallies, and mass meetings on civil and voting rights issues.
- During the farmers protest movement in India, the national union structure provided the communications infrastructure which sustained the commitment to nonviolence within the protest camps for over a year.
- Provide crucial resources for frontline activists, including material resources, professional know-how, and specialized access to political elites.
- Conversation and connection between organizers and professional groups can help better catalog what resources are needed in the moment and help streamline effective coordinated action.
- In Tunisia, the wide-reaching network of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) enabled a diverse array of society – including lawyers, factory workers, bureaucrats, and more – to collectively protest the autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. UGTT offered their offices as a safe meeting place for organizers and helped the protesters adopt a more explicitly political framing, which was crucial for the movement’s impact.
- Engage in organized non-cooperation.
- Widespread strikes organized by labor unions in cooperation with pro-democracy activists have been crucial in pushing back against democratic backsliding across many countries including Sri Lanka, India, Fiji, and South Korea.
- Make the case for democracy.
- Unions in South Africa would send their representatives abroad to rally international support for the anti-Apartheid movement.
- To sustain and broaden Solidarity’s movement in Poland, the free trade union established a robust underground communications system where they explained the broader context of their struggle for democracy and promoted the use of different civil resistance tactics.
For a longer list of potential tactics, check out Gene Sharp’s 198 methods of nonviolent action.
Additional Resources:
More detailed examples of how unions can contribute to the pro-democracy ecosystem and work in tandem with other “pillars of support” are available here or below:
- Unions Join Unlikely Allies to Defend American Elections
- American Unions Mobilize Poll Workers
- Indian Farmers’ Unions Block Roads to Bolster Democracy
- Unions Light the Candle of Democracy in South Korea
- Labor Unions Join the Fight for Civil Rights
- Comparative Caselets: The Civil Service as a Pillar of Support
- Teachers in Hungary Oppose Democratic Backsliding
- Tunisian Unions Support the Arab Spring
Read about the AFL-CIO’s “Department of People Who Work for a Living,” and the other ways unions are responding to this moment of democratic backsliding.
*This article was written by former Director of Applied Research Jonathan Pinckney and updated by Research Assistant Sivahn Sapirstein.
