Don’t Scoff

Political conditions may have created an unusually propitious opportunity to exploit this attachment. Elections analyst Henry Olsen recently noted how blue-collar anxieties are transforming political coalitions in a number of nations. Across the pond, for example, David Cameron’s Conservative party is aiming to rebrand itself the “party of workers.” Domestically, the most improbable pair of candidates, billionaire Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders, are demonstrating that working-class votes are very much up for grabs.

But a pending Supreme Court case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, may prove to be the most disruptive and auspicious variable in this equation. It could help untether labor from its progressive moorings and make new coalitions possible.

All of this is occurring alongside conservatives’ peaking frustration with the power-consolidation of big government and crony capitalism. If that augurs the right’s reinvigorated commitment to decentralization, a key question emerges: Might conservatives see workers and their local organizations as allies?

The story of this new federal education law offers invaluable insights into the roots and implications of a possible conservative/labor coalition.

Conservatives and teachers’ unions joined forces to end federal meddling in schools, helping generate veto-proof majorities in both houses. Some think this strange-bedfellows liaison will prove fleeting: The two sides came together for a specific purpose and will now go their separate ways.

But such analysis misses two crucial points. First, as a practical matter, this wasn’t a onetime affair; organized labor and some conservatives also joined forces to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. Second, there’s a deeper philosophical connection: Both conservatives and unions prioritize localized decision-making.

At its core, the new federal education law is Burkean and anti-technocratic. It swears off Beltway sophisticates and large-scale initiatives—products of what George Will recently referred to as “governments gripped by the fatal conceit” of central planning’s smarts. The new law assumes the wisdom of local institutions and trusts the judgment of state and district leaders. For instance, it puts states back in charge of assessing and improving schools. Gone are federal school ratings, federal initiatives like teacher-evaluation reform, and federal programs like Race to the Top.

The appeal to conservatives is clear. It reduces the influence of faraway national “experts” and enables community-based problem solving. The appeal to unions may be less obvious, but it’s just as powerful.

Though conservatives generally see teachers’ unions as advocates of a retrograde political agenda (e.g., anti-school choice, impenetrable job protections), these organizations can—at their best and when their political activities are put aside—be considerably more. As longstanding associations of professionals, they are able to steward their craft, mentor their members, and develop a deep understanding of and deep relationships with their communities. To the extent they function in this way and membership is noncompulsory (important qualifications, for sure), unions can take the form of Tocquevillian voluntary associations, the building blocks of civil society. Indeed, Harvard professor Robert Putnam, in his communitarian opus Bowling Alone, considers them alongside fraternal societies and veterans’ groups as incubators of local social capital.

It may seem that there is inherent antagonism between organized labor and the right. At the recent Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity, Governor Chris Christie called teachers’ unions “the single most destructive force for public education.” But this isn’t orthodoxy for conservatives involved in K-12 education. Leading conservative education scholar Frederick Hess wrote in 2014 that the Obama administration’s avaricious federal policies gave the right an opportunity to find common cause with teachers’ unions on, among other things, “empowering professionals.” And in 2015, more congressional Republicans earned an A, B, or C on report cards from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, than ever before. Sen. Alexander got an A.

Some conservatives might cry, “Apostasy!” But reflexive anti-unionism isn’t to be found in conservative scripture. Two of the scholars most frequently celebrated by the right, Friedrich Hayek and Michael Oakeshott, had no automatic labor enmity. Their concerns stemmed primarily from unions’ becoming involuntary associations, the result of mandatory union membership for those seeking work or mandatory agency fees from those covered by union-negotiated contracts. Even more open to unions was famed free-market economist Milton Friedman. He opposed “right-to-work” policies, arguing union-favored “closed-shop” arrangements were acceptable so long as they existed in a competitive environment in which workers and firms could also choose other arrangements. Ronald Reagan, once a union leader himself, expressed strong support for voluntary-association unions, declaring “Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost” and calling “the right to belong to a free trade union” “one of the most elemental human rights” (emphasis added).

This has important implications for those interested in the social value of community empowerment. As conserv-ative scholar and former White House aide Yuval Levin wrote in Room to Grow, a manifesto of the budding “reform conservatism” movement, “the premise of conservatism has always been .  .  . that what matters most about society happens in the space between the individual and the state—the space occupied by families, communities, civic and religious institutions, and the private economy.” Progressive journalist Jeff Spross, in a recent article about conservatism and labor, argued that these kinds of mediating organizations “make up the fabric of social life outside the government,” adding that “unions are a textbook example of exactly this form of association.”

It is in this context—unions functioning as voluntary professional associations of local practitioners—that conservatives might place American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten’s criticisms of No Child Left Behind’s “top-down accountability” and her call for “listening to those closest to kids.” Likewise, NEA president Lily Eskelsen García praised the new education law for ensuring “educators will have a seat at the table.” It is no coincidence that California governor Jerry Brown, whom the Los Angeles Times called “a loyal friend” of unions, speaks glowingly of the principle of “subsidiarity,” pushing authority as close to the ground as possible.

So the key overlap in the conservative/union Venn diagram is a respect for local custom and knowledge—Yale political scientist James Scott, in his groundbreaking book Seeing Like a State, uses the Greek word metis. The corollary is that cocksure D.C.-dwellers not only lack the right answers; they also inadvertently warp local practice by concocting policies that serve the purposes of central administrators. The cognoscenti may view the local leader as helplessly parochial, but conservatives and unions can recognize her as informed, no-nonsense, and prudent.

This argument may seem fanciful at this particular moment. Few political observers would now say either conservatives or unions are primarily motivated by a fidelity to decentralization and local wisdom. The GOP race—thanks to Trump’s bombast, continued economic sluggishness, terrorist threats at home, and mounting dangers abroad—has put a premium on national energy and a strong executive. Unions, which spent $1.7 billion on campaigns during the last presidential election year, appear to be merely progressive political bodies; some of them vocally support Sanders-style socialism.

But the ESSA experience could help reenergize conservatives’ latent bent for decentralization. By teaming with practitioners to empower local leaders in the service of kids, the right humanized this conservative principle and claimed a major legislative victory. It’s not hard to see how other decentralization efforts premised on partnerships with practitioners—with doctors to overhaul Obama-care, with small-business owners to reform employment policies—might prove similarly fruitful.

Decentralization, after all, is a longstanding tenet of conservatism and catalyzed many of its past wins. The right has traditionally sought to reinvigorate America by explicitly pushing authority down and out, not up and in. Reagan campaigned on disempowering Uncle Sam, the Contract with America handed authority back to states, and the Bush tax cuts returned dollars to citizens. This is the essence of conserv-ative humility: America’s genius is found in its thousands of communities and millions of citizens.

While the right may choose to refocus on decentralization and local practice, unions might be forced to do so. The Supreme Court is currently considering Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case giving the High Court the opportunity to declare mandatory agency fees unconstitutional. Such a decision would immediately hit union budgets hard: Nonmembers covered by union-negotiated contracts would no longer be required to compensate the union for those services. But the damage could be even worse—paying members could leave the union entirely. After Michigan passed right-to-work legislation in 2014 and Wisconsin restricted the ability of public-sector unions to collectively bargain, union membership in both states fell by thousands.

If the Court bans agency fees, one possible outcome is unions becoming more ideologically pure (that is, uniformly progressive) and politically pugnacious. As education-labor expert Mike Antonucci wrote in the journal Education Next, a union loss in Friedrichs could enhance solidarity “since only those who voluntarily join will partake of the union’s voice and influence.” As a result, “The tent will be smaller, but it will be filled with true believers.”

But there is another possibility. Unions could offer potential members a new value proposition: We are about practice, not politics.

This lesson would apply across industries, but education offers a clear example. Needing to make its case on an educator-by-educator basis, a teachers’ union will want as large a target membership as possible. A far-left political agenda touching on issues outside common professional interests would alienate a substantial share of possible members. The alternative would be a narrow, moderate political agenda focused on members’ shared priorities—or no political agenda at all.

With less time and money spent on elections and lobbying, unions could focus on the craft. Contrasted with those in the era teachers’ unions came of age, today’s public schools are more accountable (thanks to state and federal transparency policies) and face more competition (thanks to a range of school choice programs). In other words, unions represent teachers employed in a dramatically different industry. This reality, when combined with teachers’ personal desire to do right by kids, builds pressure on unions to focus on continuously improving the profession and individuals’ practice. The Court’s decision could catalyze, or simply accelerate, a fundamental shift in how unions engage with their members.

It is striking how often this theme comes up across the political spectrum in prognostications of the post-Friedrichs world. Ari Paul, a journalist who writes for socialist and progressive publications like Jacobin and In These Times, laments that unions’ “political departments would have to be scaled back.” But it would allow for “deep renewal and rebuilding” based on unions’ greater focus on member needs. “Rank-and-file dissidents have long had doubts about most forms of automatic dues collection, worrying that such a set-up helps create an ossified system in which a complacent top never comes face-to-face with a demobilized bottom.” Friedrichs could “drive unions to reconnect with their membership.” Similarly, in Think Progress, Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the union-aligned Economic Policy Institute, was quoted arguing that the end of agency fees could have the benefit of increasing communication between unions and their members.

Nat Malkus, a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, echoed these sentiments, writing that a loss in Friedrichs could make unions “more focused, leaner, and more effective for their core constituents.” Karen Cuen, a plaintiff in Friedrichs, believes that if unions are “worried about people leaving in droves, they might need to improve their product and make it a little more user-friendly.”

So, should the Court side with the plaintiffs, today’s unions could become more practice-oriented. But if they are unwilling or unable to do so, there are organizations eager to take their place. Educators 4 Excellence and the Association for American Educators, for instance, aim to serve teachers and advance the profession by working outside the traditional union structure. Frederick Hess noted the “Tocquevillian impulse” behind such efforts, writing that reform-minded teachers bring “a practical appreciation of consequences and daily realities” that eludes nonpractitioners.

Whether traditional unions evolve or are replaced, in a post-Friedrichs world organized labor could behave more like the voluntary associations of professionals that Friedman and Reagan defended. And perhaps they would then function as the mediating, civil-society bodies that Tocque-ville, Putnam, and Levin contemplate.

So what does all of this forecast for the future? First, regardless of the Court’s decision in Friedrichs, in the short-term we’ll start to see the consequences of the conservative/labor alliance on education. With ESSA’s devolution of authority, we’ll be able to assess what practitioner-led reform looks like. It could be the case that districts (often controlled by powerful union affiliates) increase job protections and salaries; maybe more conservative localities expand school choice. Nonideological state and local leaders might chart moderate courses marked by small-scale reforms and continuous micro-adjustments. The lessons learned here will be applicable far beyond education policy.

In the midterm, we may well see conservatives offering more policy proposals based on decentralization and collaborations with local practitioners. Some on the right have been vigorously championing this precise strategy; upstart conservatives have increasingly charged the GOP establishment with defending the “crony capitalism” of preferential treatment for massive, well-connected corporations.

If, instead, local expertise and energy are to serve as the wellsprings of conservatism’s idea generation, the speaker of the House and a go-to source for the right’s thought leadership, Paul Ryan, deserves close attention. It is instructive that in a 2009 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, the then-rising star was described as a supporter of free-market economics and a friend of his local labor unions. “A lot of conservatives just think unions are nothing but bad. That’s just not true,” Ryan was quoted as saying. “They’re people who are just trying to make their lives better.”

Lastly, in the long-term, we should be on the lookout for a political realignment; that is, will the interests of conservatives and labor increasingly coincide? Though once unthinkable, this is now at least plausible. The Washington Post recently reported on the disaffected blue-collar “towns that love Donald Trump.” A range of widely read commentators, including former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan and former Clinton domestic-policy adviser Bill Galston, have recently explored how the economic anxieties of working-class voters are influencing the 2016 race in unexpected ways. Even the leader of the SEIU, the nation’s second-largest union, said many of the organization’s members are responding to Trump’s message. Regardless of who wins the GOP nomination, those skeptical of a conservative/labor coalition should recall that the Teamsters endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984.

The last decade hasn’t been the best of times for our major institutions. Americans have been let down by big banks, the economy, our border patrol, even New Orleans’s levees. We were told ISIS was a JV team, that we could keep our health care if we liked it, that Iraqi WMDs were a slam-dunk. It should come as no surprise, then, that Americans have responded by registering infinitesimal trust in the federal government and big business.

But it should also come as no surprise that recent years have seen a proliferation of books on trusting the many instead of the mighty: The Wisdom of Crowds, The Allure of Order, Antifragile, The Evolution of Everything, Two Cheers for Anarchism. Millennials, the generation that came of age during this era, have developed a staunch do-it-ourselves mentality, outpacing other generations in terms of charitable giving, volunteering, and entrepreneurship.

In short, the Decade of Mistakes by Experts has produced an understandable appetite for self-determination. Reagan understood this 35 years ago. After a decade defined by Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation, hostages, and a “crisis of confidence,” he came into office seeking to hand power back to states, communities, and citizens. The opportunity and challenge for today’s conservatives is to understand that this moment is the same. Whether the Tea Party revolt, the “reformicon” focus on civil society, or the GOP’s takeover of Congress and state legislatures, distributing authority is the order of the day.

The ESSA experience suggests one repercussion might be the right’s reconsideration of its relationship with labor. This could lead not only to electoral success and policy wins; it might also bring conservatives back to the basics, refocusing on the local organizations making up the space between individuals and our largest institutions.

Andy Smarick is a partner at Bellwether Education Partners and senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He worked at the White House and Department of Education in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed to education posts by governors Chris Christie and Larry Hogan.