To Defeat Authoritarianism, We Need Labor

This Labor Day, institutional leaders contemplating how to stand up to arbitrary power should reflect on the old IWW slogan: an injury to one is an injury to all. In other words, a collective problem calls for a collective response. Institutions should look to the labor movement, in part for organizing and advocacy strategies, but also because any coalition to defend democracy must include organized labor.

Less than one year into his second term, President Trump's most consistent priority seems to be imposing costs on anyone who disagrees with the administration's views, while rewarding and empowering his favorites: "tough on crime" rhetoric notwithstanding, January 6 rioters got pardons; the people who prosecuted them got fired. Harnessing the executive branch and his own bully pulpit, Trump aims to force institutions to choose between their wallets, and their integrity. These ultimatums should be understood as assertions of power; while couched in legal language, they bear at most tenuous relationships to law.

Understandably, institutions have struggled to respond to these threats. One reason: they have mostly been going it alone. This is partly because the Trump administration has tended to set its sights on one news outlet, university, law firm, or city at a time; others may have hoped that by keeping quiet, they'd avoid being next. (The less said about law firms that tried to gain a competitive advantage by poaching lawyers or clients from firms targeted by the Trump administration, the better.)

In building coalitions to protect their own independence and democracy more generally, institutions should view organized labor as a partner, rather than an adversary. Research by political scientists confirms that labor unions are important to healthy democracies for several mutually reinforcing reasons. Among them, unions help reduce income inequality, which corrodes democracy. As democratically run organizations, unions are "schools for democracy," with members developing political skills that they then bring to electoral politics as voters, volunteers, and candidates. They effectively amplify their members' concerns in the political process, while also increasing their members' knowledge about politics. And union representation tends to decrease white workers' racial resentment, which is an important vector of authoritarianism.

For similar reasons, the historian Joseph McCartin recently called for "a labor-led democracy movement." This requires at least two things. First, for unions to embrace this role, directing even more of their limited resources to educating and mobilizing their own members and nonunion workers in defense of democracy. To be clear, most unions are already robustly engaged in this work-though a small handful have recently failed important tests of inter-union solidarity. Second, other institutions - especially those that depend on democracy - must view unions first as allies in the fight against authoritarianism. To put it more concretely: a university, non-profit, or media outlet that engages in union-busting in 2025 is making a strategic mistake, prioritizing limited short-term benefits over the big picture.

Unions are already on the front lines of organizing resistance to anti-democratic policies. To start with some recent examples, unions (together with other groups) have organized protests against draconian immigration policies, the deployment of militarized forces in US cities, and mass firings of federal workers. And by naming apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia as their union brother, the leadership of the Sheet Metal Workers union made it harder for the Trump administration to claim to be acting in the interests of and with the support of the (white) working class.

Unions also push employers to defend workers' safety and professional integrity, and they act on their own (or with other movement groups) when employers fall short. Within a workplace, unions can urge employers to show backbone when faced with an unlawful demand by the Trump administration. They can also raise the costs to employers of capitulation or cooperation, as in the case of a striking Teamsters local's demand that the employer not over-comply with ICE. Outside of workplaces, unions call public attention to how Trump administration policies will harm their members or the public. And unions litigate on behalf of their members. For example, the NewsGuild was part of a coalition of plaintiffs that sued the Department of Homeland Security over officers' use of force against both protestors and reporters covering ICE raids in Southern California. The American Association of University Professors, has filed several lawsuits over threats to academic freedom; these include challenges to the administration's revocations of student or employment visas because of protected speech, and threats to yank federal funding over DEI programs. And unions representing public employees are litigating over the administration's many efforts to close entire federal agencies despite statutory mandates, engage in mass layoffs and push federal workers to resign, and muzzle federal workers who might express dissent. It may be that private employers who are also harmed by the subjects of these cases either openly or tacitly support them, though in at least one case - an AAUP suit challenging funding cuts at Columbia - litigation highlighted that workers wanted to fight for their institution's independence, despite leadership's decision to seek a settlement with the Trump administration.

In a sense, the Trump administration seems to agree with this analysis-its actions to date suggest that it views the labor movement as another institution to be either co-opted or retaliated against. It recently invoked "national security" to suspend collective bargaining rights for hundreds of thousands of workers at agencies ranging from the Social Security Administration to the EPA. As the unions argued in a lawsuit challenging the first of these orders, the list of covered agencies makes little sense when viewed through the lens of national security - but it does track unions' opposition to Trump administration policies.

President Trump also fired NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox, despite statutory language that Board members may be removed only for "neglect of duty or malfeasance in office." This had the immediate effect of depriving the Board of a quorum, and preventing it from deciding unfair labor practice cases. (Trump later nominated two management-side lawyers to the Board; they are awaiting Senate confirmation.) And two Trump-appointed Fifth Circuit judges recently barred the NLRB from proceeding with three unfair labor practice cases at all, pending adjudication of this and other challenges to the Board's structure. This interim order is remarkable because it goes further than the likely remedy if the plaintiffs ultimately succeed - in previous similar cases, courts have excised good-cause protections from statutes without striking those statutes down altogether - and because it effectively makes compliance with labor law optional within the Fifth Circuit. While this may all seem like good news for employers who dislike the NLRA's protections for workers' concerted activity, it should alarm both employers and unions that a President bent on rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies would be able to manipulate the Board's composition at will.

There are already some excellent examples of collective action to defend institutional independence and democratic values. For one, hundreds of law firms joined amicus briefs in defense of the firms targeted by executive orders; the list included plenty of plaintiff- and union-side firms, speaking up in defense of firms that are normally adversaries. Showing a united front, even symbolically, can make a difference - but institutions should also consider making more tangible commitments to defending themselves and each other. Numerous university faculty senates, including at the University of Minnesota where I teach, have urged their administrations to establish a mutual legal defense compact. (Such a compact might even deter the administration from targeting individual schools, much like a robust strike fund might motivate an employer to reach an agreement.) Law firms can join with unions and civil rights groups to provide pro bono representation for federal workers and other individuals targeted by the administration. The point is not that any one of these efforts will save the day on its own, but instead that institutions, unions, and other civil society groups should strategize and experiment.

When universities cede their academic freedom, it becomes harder for researchers anywhere to work collaboratively and without fear; when law firms agree to provide free legal services to the government and refrain from taking up disfavored causes, it chips away at the rule of law on which lawyers and clients alike rely. These institutions, along with the media, civil society groups, unions, and others, depend on democracy and the rule of law, and vice-versa. Recognizing this fundamental shared value suggests a path forward - at least for now, we're all in it together.

Charlotte Garden is a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School; the views expressed in this essay are hers alone.

Civil rights, Economic Inequality, Equality and Liberty, Executive Power, First Amendment, Labor and Employment Law, Rule of Law, Workers' Rights