by Henry De Groot reflects on his work with Labor for Bernie to consider what it will take to win union endorsements for a national DSA slate in 2026.
To Organize In 2026, Look To 2016
Interest in taking real steps towards the formation of a new party continues to grow within the Democratic Socialist of America. And not only in DSA, but also in the wider progressive movement, the failure of the Democrats is so evident that the necessity of a new party increasingly forces us to think through how such a vehicle can be established.
Among the union rank and file, there is a tremendous openness to a political alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. Working people often feel ostracized from politics, and even when they express support for the Republicans or Democrats, they are usually still critical of the moneyed interests in both parties. Even those workers who have been won over by Trump since his anti-establishment, faux-pro-worker 2016 campaign, generally support him because they feel he is a challenge to a system that doesn’t work for them.
And political conversations happen on the shop-floor among co-workers all the time, whether they are discussing the merits of a progressive candidate, the latest right-wing podcast, the pros and cons of Trump’s plan for Greenland, or what the Big Beautiful Bill will mean for their families’ healthcare. Anyone who suggests that workers are only focused on bread and butter issues — that they don’t engage directly in questions of party or elections, or in the larger debates of the culture war — doesn’t know workers. These are the everyday conversations we can turn into organizing union members towards support for a new party.
By looking back on the successes of Labor For Bernie in 2016 and 2020, we can see that building such a movement within the trade unions is not just possible, but has already been done before with tremendous success.
Within DSA, those who support making real moves towards a new party are increasingly organizing under the label of ‘Partyist.’ However, while the Partyists generally recognize the importance of organized labor in their efforts, they mostly lack a clear idea of exactly what role labor can play and how Partyists should approach the labor movement. Will unions come along willingly, or even lead the effort to launch a new party? Will they have to be dragged along? And what strategies and tactics should Partyists employ to win trade union support for the effort to launch a new party?
At the same time that many in DSA are focused on the need to launch a new party, others are already deeply engaged in labor work. But overwhelmingly, DSA labor activists are not focused on organizing for a new party within the labor movement. Rather, most DSA labor activists focus on simple union solidarity, showing up to strikes or getting involved in their own unions or in new organizing campaigns. The layer which is somewhat more involved is generally oriented to the labor reform movement. Yet, while this reform movement might seem to be the natural ally of Partyists, in practice labor reformers seldom prioritize agitation around the need for a new party; in fact, some reformers, including DSA members, actively try to keep their reform caucuses ‘apolitical.’
For those who see labor as a key field for the Partyist cause, it is essential that we attack this question from both sides. We must promote a consciousness of the specific tasks within the labor movement for the Partyist movement, and simultaneously promote a Partyist consciousness within DSA labor, the labor reform movement, and the wider labor left.
By looking back on the successes of Labor For Bernie in 2016 and 2020, we can see that building such a movement within the trade unions is not just possible, but has already been done before with tremendous success. If we draw lessons from that model, and consider how it can be expanded by the employment of our existing DSA infrastructure, we can chart a clear path to organizing for crucial union endorsements for DSA’s electoral efforts in 2026.
A New Party Will Need The Unions
Even though the labor movement has been profoundly weakened by decades of neoliberal attacks, organized labor is still a powerful force. With 14 million members in unions and many millions more living in union households, organized labor is still the largest social movement in the United States. And with massive treasuries, according to Open Secrets unions spent more than $283,000 million in the 2023-2024 election cycle, with the Carpenters and the National Education Association leading the pack with each giving more than $30,000,000 to candidates and outside groups.1
Unions are also a force to be reckoned with in terms of field operations. Even if most members remain disengaged from their unions, organized labor is still able to field a massive number of staffers and member activists to knock doors and make calls. By reaching out to their own wider layers of members, and then to members of the public, they can massively impact GOTV efforts. This was shown decisively in 2020, with some 1,700 UNITE HERE members knocking more than 3 million doors. It is widely recognized that UNITE HERE likely delivered Nevada for Biden single-handedly.
And union support for the Democratic Party goes far beyond funding campaigns through direct donations or support in the field. Although the source is from a right-wing, anti-union website, this graph is still helpful in showing the $1.6 billion that unions spent on supporting the “big Democratic Party,” that is, the set of think-tanks, campaigns, and other civil society groups which, while not legally the Democratic Party, are still the crucial infrastructure of the Democratic coalition.2 Many of these groups are actually worthwhile causes for union dollars, like United Students Against Sweatshops or the National Employment Law Project. But others, like the Democratic Governors Association or the Clinton-aligned Center for American Progress, are key strongholds of the Democratic establishment.
Such factors prove most impactful during the presidential elections. But they are also present at a smaller level in city and state elections. Support from union leaders can make or break a Democrats campaign for city council as their endorsements hold symbolic impact and can paint candidates as champions of the working class. And union leaders weigh in on state legislation which affects their members, while making large contributions to races for state house seats or the governor’s mansion. And many union members or union leaders end up running for public office, usually starting at the local level.
Suffice it to say, there is power in a union. And that power is not limited to the shop floor.
A new party, especially one based on working class politics, will need these capabilities to fund and fuel their campaign efforts. In fact, the need for union cash, union volunteers, and union relationships will be far more desperate for a party committed to challenging the status quo. We saw during Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 campaign the extent to which supposedly “neutral” institutions like the press are effectively brought to bear in order to attack and smear any campaign seeking to challenge the rule of the rich.
Additionally, a new political party will be in desperate need of qualified candidates for public office. And since such a party, by definition, will have a limited roster of candidates with experience holding local offices to run for large state and national seats, we will need to draw heavily on candidates who have built their resumes in the social movements: unions, Black Lives Matter, tenant organizing, and climate activists. Union leaders and union member-activists will play a hugely important role in filling this need for candidates.
If an expanded DSA electoral project is to break beyond a handful of seats, we will need a massive expansion of resources and infrastructure. In other words, we need the unions.
Will The Unions Break From The Democrats on Their Own?
If we recognize that a new socialist party will need support from the trade unions to grow into a serious force, then we must ask: “how can this support be achieved?” Or more specifically, will the unions break from the Democrats on their own?
The casual socialist observer doesn’t understand why the unions are so tied to the Democrats, nor why time and time again they continue to pour resources and political capital into a party which invariably sells out its membership.
What these comrades fail to understand is that the class struggle does not just exist between the capitalists and the working class in society, or between the bosses and the employees in the workplace. The class struggle also rages within the trade unions themselves.
A large number of national and local unions are profoundly bureaucratic, undemocratic, and corrupt. And many more experience these defects to a lesser degree. Decision making is made in a top-down manner, and decisions about which candidates to endorse (or any other decisions with the unions) are often made by leadership without input. At best, they are made through a “democratic process” carefully steered by leadership with limited or performative membership participation. This is the reality in the trade unions.
The casual socialist observer doesn’t understand why the unions are so tied to the Democrats, nor why time and time again they continue to pour resources and political capital into a party which invariably sells out its membership.
The top union leadership have no desire to break from the Democratic establishment because they benefit from the same system of disenfranchisement and selling out that typifies the Democratic Party. They benefit from business as usual because their support of establishment Democrats results in modest crumbs of reform which they can “deliver” to their members; monopolizing this process allows them to wield it to secure and maintain influence among their members. And in fact, in many ways the union officials make up the upper-middle layers of the ranks of the Democratic Party.
Why would these corrupt union leaders break from a party which serves their interests? And since they almost unilaterally control the unions, why would they have the unions do so either?
Now, this characterization does not hold monolithically. The labor movement is mostly, but not completely, bankrupt. There are some genuinely militant, democratic, and left led-unions which will likely back a credible project from its earliest days. And there are a number of other left-opportunist labor leaders who recognize that the failure of the democrats is so profound, and the pressure from their membership is so great, that maintaining their support is intolerable. As a result, these “progressive-opportunists” may break relatively early from the Democrats out of consideration for the best interests of their own careers. The more credible the project we present is, and the more credible it becomes as we win forces to it, the easier we make it for left-led or left-opportunist led unions to join our cause.
How The Unions Can Be Won To A Break With The Democrats?
While a small number of left-led national and local unions may sign on to a new party from the beginning, the majority of the labor movement will not.
On the other end of the spectrum, some unions are so politically backwards that there is basically no prospect of them backing a new political formation. On a structural level, for some unions like the police unions, the border patrol unions, or union locals involved in building pipelines or military weapons, the material interests of their membership is so tied to the oppression and exploitation of the capitalist-imperialist system that that there is little to no prospect of winning them to support of a new party. Other union locals may simply have an over-whelmingly right-wing membership, and other union locals remain influenced or controlled by organized crime. For these unions, there is very little prospect of them joining a new party.
But the vast majority of national and local unions fall somewhere in between these two poles. This is because, even though these unions are fundamentally undemocratic in practice, they remain democratic in structure. In the vast majority of cases, there is the possibility that national or local unions could be won to supporting a new party, but this can only be achieved by overcoming the structural interests and intentions of the leadership.
Even though these unions are fundamentally undemocratic in practice, they remain democratic in structure.
This can only be done by organizing the progressive elements within these unions in support of breaking with the democrats and supporting the formation of a new party.
Learning From Labor For Bernie
In the middling majority of unions which will not come out immediately in support of a new project, partyism must be won through energetic and systematic organizing of the union membership. This process begins with the existing left forces and moves towards the center.
Some of us have seen this work done before.
In 2016 and again in 2020, labor leftists came together under the aegis Labor for Bernie, an independent project to bring labor in support of Senator Sanders’ campaign. You can read a much more thorough account of the 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Steve Early’s article “Lessons of Labor for Bernie.”
The project included a national formation, steering committees in LA, the Bay Area, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities, a website, and a list of contacts who responded to the initial call in 2016, or were re-activated or newly activated come 2020. In 2016 the effort was volunteer-led, while in 2020 some funds were raised to hire a single staffer.
Union activists moved resolutions in a number of unions, and developed contacts in a far larger layer. The organizing team reached out to union members who signed up online, and put members working in the same unions in touch, creating “Union For Bernie” formations (ie. SEIU For Bernie, CWA For Bernie).
In 2016 an initial success came in the Communications Workers of America, where a formal three-month long decision making process with town-halls and discussions was already the unions’ procedure, concluding with a binding poll. This was a dramatic blow to the Trumka-Hillary faction. And while many unions would go on to endorse Hillary, usually in a top-down manner,
I served on the Steering Committee of Massachusetts Labor for Bernie in 2020. Our role was rather modest, mine even more so. Not only was much of the organizing of union support taken on by the formal side of the election campaign, but a huge number of pro-Bernie union members were self-organizing. They required only some model resolution language and a list of contacts from us, and they were underway on their own initiative. But in addition to these two efforts, we tried to make an impact with our own organizing, working to turn supporters into activists, and hosting social events to bring people together.
Our subjective efforts made a difference, both in spurring efforts in new unions and providing tools for existing efforts. But overwhelmingly the effort was driven by self-organized workers. Thousands and thousands of union members wanted to organize within their unions in support of a self-described Democratic Socialist candidate, there was no convincing needed.
Although our infrastructure was stronger in 2020, the political landscape was less favorable. The number of unions that backed Bernie in 2020 was not much more impressive than in 2016, partially because the field was more crowded and the choice much less clear. And the results of our own organizing were not tremendous; but at least to some degree, we moved the needle, or won “field margin” victories, in a couple union locals or national unions.
But the mediocre results were primarily due not to a limitation of opportunities, but a limitation of our own resources. It was only half-way through the campaign in 2020 that Labor for Bernie was able to hire a single national staffer, and our own steering committee in Massachusetts was just a half-dozen or so volunteers.
Looking back with what I now know about organizing, I know with more resources we could have made so many more calls, held so many more 1on1s, trained so many more worker-leaders, and initiated a far greater number of serious efforts within locals. With resources, we could have delivered far greater results.
Labor For Bernie, With DSA Characteristics
If DSA gets serious about launching a new party, DSA’s labor apparatus will be far better suited than we were in Labor for Bernie to carry out energetic and systematic organizing within the trade unions.
The strategy largely remains the same: build majority support in as many national and local unions as possible, and use this to win official union endorsements of our project.
The tactics are also largely identical: build lists of supporters, identify leading activists, provide them with model resolutions, trainings, and coaching, and talk with thousands and thousands of union members.
Such work would begin with the DSA members we already have embedded in the trade union movement. Initial campaigning could identify potential supporters, and begin the process of building out and training larger teams in each target union local. The first public effort in these target unions could begin by pushing for the democratization of endorsement processes. This could avoid an early confrontation with union leadership, while softening the ground for later endorsement campaigns, and identifying additional sympathizers. Then, after many months of campaigning, a resolution to endorse local candidates or a slate in its entirety can be brought forward.
DSA already has forces at the national level, as well as in most major chapters, which could undertake this work. The National Labor Commission could spearhead these efforts at the national level, and coordinate efforts in the national unions (especially through industry/national union groups if the MUG-R&R amendment passes). And local DSA labor formations can bottom-line coordination at the local level.
If DSA ran a national slate of candidates in 2026, there are different options for how unions could endorse the project. The highest level of endorsement would be for national unions to endorse the project as a whole, endorsing the entire slate at once. But it is also possible as an intermediate goal to win national union endorsements for single candidates, or local union endorsements for the entire slate. And the easiest goal is to simply get local unions to endorse their local candidate, without them endorsing the entire slate.
If we run 10 candidates in 10 major chapters in 2026, even pursuing this most modest of endorsement goals for our slate immediately gives us a list in every participating chapter of potential unions which could endorse. If each of these 10 campaigns could win 10 local-only endorsements, we could bring the resources of 100 union locals in support of our slate, even without winning a single endorsement of the slate itself.
Carrying all this out means a fundamental shift in the work of most of our labor formations, transforming them from projects which are primarily concerned with organizing union solidarity into campaign apparatuses focused not just on labor but on the convergence of labor and electoral politics. This doesn’t mean abandoning our current work; rather, continuing it while integrating it with this political campaigning will give us a strong basis of legitimacy.
Such an effort would immediately have far more resources and volunteers than Labor For Bernie ever did. But it would not only be far stronger and bigger than Labor for Bernie, it would also be far more comprehensive, since our project would be tied into the larger DSA infrastructure.
Turning our labor formations into electoral machines focused on winning union endorsements does not require us to take a step back from our work engaging in union solidarity or the labor reform movement. Rather, these can be pursued in a far more integrated way. Union members excited about our efforts to move towards political independence can be brought out to a picket line, into a reform caucus, or recruited directly into DSA. Once here, they need not limit themselves to labor, but can also get involved in ecosocialism, housing, and the many other fights that impact them.
Winning Partyism In the Reform Movement
The above work would be made far easier if the existing reform movements could be brought in support of the drive to break labor from the Democratic Party.
Winning these groups early in the campaign would win tremendous reinforcements to our efforts, and provide important inroads into the trade union movement.
There are those resistant to the idea of politicizing the reform movements. But why shouldn’t a movement that seeks to reform its union also seek to reform its unions’ relationship with the Democratic Party?
Some say that our reform movements should be kept open to union members of all stripes. And certainly we would be foolish to bar members from a reform group for voting for Biden or Trump. But woe to those who discount the ability of a working-class alternative to win over both those scared by Republican reaction, and disenfranchised by neoliberal Democratic sellouts. Rather, for many union members, it will precisely be the reform movement’s ability to support a grander political challenge to the Democratic and Republican parties which will spur their involvement in more specific fights over union democracy and militancy.
Any comrade who thinks we can take on the labor bureaucracy without taking on its big brother, the Democratic Party, is profoundly naive about the relation between the two. Labor bureaucracy and labor Democraticism mutually reinforce one another and are largely championed by the exact same individuals.
It is not possible to reform our unions without reforming their relationship to the Democratic Party. If we can secure the reform movement’s support for this new party, it will be a tremendous step towards making the new party a reality.
Overcoming Resistance to Partyism Within DSA
While results cannot be guaranteed in this or that union, there is no question that if the above plan was taken up energetically it would produce tremendous results in terms of endorsements won and union members recruited to DSA.
The main obstacle to this work is not the campaign itself, which is all but ensured the moment it is taken up. Rather, the main obstacle is resistance to this work within DSA, and especially within DSA labor.
DSA labor remains overwhelmingly economistic. At the top, DSA labor leaders are actively economistic, meaning they prioritize struggles for bread and butter reforms, and resist or actively oppose bringing politics into our labor work. This is also expressed by their tailing of the leadership of the unions or the union reform movement, resisting or downplaying criticisms or the development of an independent socialist analysis. And at the base, the majority of dsa labor activists or those interested in labor are often unconsciously economistic, because they are focused on the simple functions of making their unions work and have not been educated on the importance and possibility of waging political fights within the labor movement.
It is understandable that DSA labor activists, who have spent years working so hard just to make their unions function normally, may be skeptical that something so big can be undertaken. Labor activists know that you have to fight like hell just to win basic victories like a new contract or organizing a new shop. And we are right to be terrified of losing what we have gained when it feels like we are under attack from all sides, when we are under attack from all sides. But sometimes it is just exactly a bold and big campaign which can overcome thousands of small and enduring obstacles.Sometimes we break through. When the working class movement gets underway, when it takes on clear politics, is armed with a sound strategy, and energetically takes up the simple tactics of winning more workers to its cause, it can become unstoppable.
- https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib?cycle=2024&ind=P ↩︎
- https://employeerightsact.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2010-2018_ERA_HowLaborUnionsFinanceTheirPolAgenda-3.pdf ↩︎
Henry De Groot
Henry De Groot, he/him, is involved with the Boston DSA Labor Working Group, an editor of Working Mass, and author of the book Student Radicals and the Rise of Russian Marxism.
