Conservatives, embrace Big Labor at your peril

Published December 9, 2019 12:00am ET



As the Democratic candidates court union endorsements, Big Labor is gearing up to spend big in 2020. This election cycle, labor union PACs have already made nearly $34 million in contributions — 84% to Democrats.

Yet, some conservatives are offering olive branches to Big Labor in hopes union officials will abandon their allies on the Left. For example, the R Street Institute’s Eli Lehrer recently urged the Trump administration to “help non-traditional labor organizations,” also known as “worker centers.” In Lehrer’s words: “A strategy of supporting groups that perform some functions of unions but not all does not mean cozying up to the AFL-CIO, the United Auto Workers, the Teamsters, or any other part of ‘Big Labor’—just the opposite, in fact.”

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