Issue 19

By David Thomas Graves

A Worker’s Guide to Working with the Enemy

Labor unions are bleeding out. Membership is falling, contracts are weakening, and our political power has been hollowed out. The uncomfortable truth is that part of the blame lies squarely inside our own halls. We do not know how to talk to Republicans, and our leadership refuses to learn. Until that changes, the labor movement will keep losing ground.

Communication Is Survival

For too long, union activists have treated Republicans as the enemy instead of as people who need to be persuaded. It is easier to mock, meme, or ignore them than to engage them. The result is that our message dies in the echo chamber of the left while half the country is written off as unreachable.

This is suicide. Communication is not optional. It is survival. If you cannot sit across from someone who disagrees with you and make your case, you do not deserve to represent workers.

Republicans are not unreachable. They understand labor, but they frame it differently. They see labor as business, as property, as a cost of production. If you cannot speak in those terms, you will lose the debate before it even begins. Republicans are not swayed by feelings. They respond to logic, structure, and measurable value. If you show up with only emotion, you look weak. When unions get defensive, they always swing offensive, and the cycle of hostility repeats. Meanwhile, workers keep losing.

The Right-to-Work Trap

Everyone in the labor movement knows right-to-work laws are dangerous. But most of us fight them with the wrong weapons. We argue fairness. We argue morality. And Republicans do not care.

The only way to beat right-to-work is to call it what it is, government overreach.

Right-to-work prevents two private entities, a union and an employer, from negotiating a contract that includes fair-share payments. That is government telling private businesses what they can and cannot do. That is not free market. That is bureaucracy.

Right-to-work undermines state sovereignty by forcing federal standards onto local business relationships. Republicans claim to despise Washington’s overreach. Right-to-work is the definition of Washington’s hand in the pocket of private enterprise.

Right-to-work creates subsidies for freeloaders. It forces unions by law to represent everyone in the bargaining unit, even those who refuse to pay dues. That is corporate welfare for individuals, baked into the law. Republicans rail against subsidies. Right-to-work mandates one.

Public sector unions are exempt. They can still charge agency fees because politicians rely on them for power. Private unions, meanwhile, get gutted. That is not free enterprise. That is politicians picking winners and losers. Republicans despise that when it happens to corporations. They should despise it when it happens to unions.

Frame right-to-work this way and it collapses under Republican logic. Not as a moral issue. Not as fairness. As government intrusion into private contracts. That is how you win.

What a Union Really Means

Before we tear into toxic solidarity, we have to acknowledge why union culture feels so sacred to so many of us. For a lot of members, the union hall is the only thing they truly own. They might not own a home. They might not have assets. But they own that hall, and every dollar in its coffers.

And those dollars are not just numbers on a ledger. They represent broken backs, failed marriages, car accidents after seventeen-hour shifts. They represent missed birthdays, missed ball games, and missed graduations. They represent the pain of making a living and the degradation of the body that comes with it.

I sit on an executive board. I have been in the room where those dollars are spent. I know that every decision carries the weight of suffering behind it. That is why the culture of solidarity exists. It is why union members see each other as family. It is why slogans like brotherhood and sisterhood stick. Because behind them is real sacrifice.

But leadership must be clear-eyed. Leadership must understand that those sacrifices cannot become a shield for ideology. It is easy to let pain cloud judgment. It is easy to turn culture into dogma. The responsibility of leadership is to separate feelings from facts, culture from contracts, and sacrifice from strategy. To do less is not leadership. It is weakness disguised as care.

Killing Toxic Solidarity

Here is the hard truth. You are not my brother. You are not my sister. You are my colleague. That is not disrespect. That is clarity. Solidarity has meaning only when it is real. It is standing shoulder to shoulder on a picket line. It is refusing to cross someone else’s line even when it costs you. It is holding firm in negotiations when the pressure is unbearable. That is solidarity. Words are not.

When union leaders inflate solidarity into a myth, they poison it. They turn it into toxic solidarity. They make it about slogans instead of action. They tell workers they are part of a family when in truth we are part of an organization. An organization with a chartered purpose: to bargain contracts and enforce them. Pretending otherwise undermines credibility and makes unions sound like cults instead of business partners.

Republicans do not buy sacred language. They respect contracts, enforcement, and results. If you want to be taken seriously across the aisle, stop peddling false family. Stop lying to yourself about what unions are.

Labor Is Not Sacred

Labor is not a covenant. It is not a right. It is a transaction. It is time, skill, and experience combined into property with market value. Every worker invests in their own labor. They invest time into skills. They invest experience into mastery. That labor becomes capital. Wages are simply the exchange rate for that capital. That is the cycle.

Republicans understand this. They view labor as a business transaction. When unions present labor as sacred, they sound ideological. When they present it as property, they sound real. You cannot argue sacred. You can argue value.

Labor Is Business

Labor is not an ideology. It is not a sermon. It is business. It is an input on a balance sheet and a driver of profits. That reality does not cheapen labor. It strengthens it.

Workers are investors. They invest time, skill, and experience. Unions are the vehicle that protects that investment from being devalued. This is how you explain labor to Republicans.

Business has three stakeholders: owners, workers, and the public. If unions position workers as stakeholders, they cannot be ignored. Stakeholders have enforceable claims. Stakeholders are part of the process. Sermons do not win seats at the table. Stakeholder status does.

Here is the translation in practice. Instead of saying “workers deserve dignity,” say “undervaluing labor creates instability in the market by reducing the return on worker investment.” Instead of saying “protect our brotherhood,” say “protecting skilled labor ensures stability in supply chains and reduces corporate risk.” One is emotion. The other is business. Republicans dismiss the first. They are forced to debate the second.

Labor is math. Inputs and outputs. Risk and reward. Speak that language, and you win.

Political Neutrality or Death

This is the final truth. Unions cannot survive as partisan arms of the Democratic Party. Democrats buy union votes cheap. They wave at us during speeches, introduce symbolic bills that go nowhere, and pay pennies on the dollar for total loyalty. Republicans do not compete because they assume the vote is already sold. Why would they invest political capital when the outcome is rigged?

Union leadership calls this strategy. It is cowardice. They cling to Democrats because it is comfortable. They avoid Republicans because they lack the skillset to communicate across the aisle. That is not ideology. That is incompetence.

Political neutrality is not weakness. It is power. Neutrality forces both parties to compete. It forces Republicans to put policy on the table. It forces Democrats to stop phoning it in. It raises the value of the union vote.

If you cannot sit across from a Republican, treat them as human, and negotiate in good faith, you do not belong in leadership. If you cannot recognize that Democrats have failed us as often as Republicans, you are not honest enough to lead. If you cannot put your members above your ideology, you are betraying them.

Neutrality means every politician is a vendor. Every party must bid. Every policy must deliver measurable value. That is how unions survive. That is how workers win.

Political neutrality or death. That is the choice.

© David Thomas Graves 2025