Union Political Activity

The Union Political Machine

Labor unions have been major political actors in democracies since the 19th century. In the United States, unions spend roughly $1.8 billion per election cycle on political activities, including PAC contributions, issue advertising, voter registration drives, and get-out-the-vote operations. The AFL-CIO, SEIU, and teachers' unions (NEA and AFT) are consistently among the largest political spenders in the country.

But unions' political power depends more on mobilization than money. A union with 100,000 members can deploy thousands of trained volunteers to knock on doors, staff phone banks, and drive voters to polls. This ground-game capacity is far more valuable per dollar than television advertising. In the 2020 election, union households represented roughly 18% of voters, and they supported Biden by 16 percentage points, a margin that was decisive in key swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Decline and Adaptation

Union political influence has declined alongside union membership. In 1955, roughly 35% of US private-sector workers belonged to unions. By 2024, that figure was about 6%. This collapse has reduced the organizational infrastructure that once turned working-class voters into a reliable political bloc. Some political scientists argue that union decline is a primary cause of rising inequality and working-class disengagement from politics.

Internationally, the picture varies. Scandinavian unions remain powerful, with membership rates above 65% in Sweden and Denmark. British unions, weakened by Thatcher's reforms, retain influence within the Labour Party. In developing countries, unions play crucial roles in democratic transitions, as South Africa's COSATU did in ending apartheid. The global trend, however, is toward declining membership and political influence, a shift that reshapes the balance of power between labor and capital in democratic politics.

Worked Example: Wisconsin's Act 10

In 2011, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed Act 10, which stripped most public-sector unions of collective bargaining rights and, crucially, ended automatic payroll deduction of union dues. The financial mechanism mattered more than the rhetoric: once workers had to opt in and write a check themselves, membership collapsed. Wisconsin's chapter of AFSCME, which had roughly 63,000 members before Act 10, fell to under 20,000 within a few years. The law triggered mass protests at the Capitol and a 2012 recall election, which Walker survived, partly by outspending his opponent.

Act 10 is a case study in how campaign-finance and labor policy intertwine: weakening a union's dues base weakens its ability to fund politics, which weakens the party it supports, which makes further anti-union legislation easier to pass. Compare union density across democracies to see how unusual the American position is:

Where density is high, unions remain a durable counterweight to corporate money; where it has collapsed, that counterweight largely disappears.