Image by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen.

Every four years, like clockwork, our two major parties serve up presidential candidates whose commitment to the cause of labor is more rhetorical than real.

This is most obviously true of conservative Republican courting of working-class voters. That venerable bait-and-switch routine reached its 21st century apex in the form of Donald Trump’s successful faux populist campaigns for the White House in 2016 and 2024. Post-election, his first and now second administration quickly displayed little interest in helping anyone other than Trump’s own billionaire class supporters.

Democratic contenders for the White House tend to disappoint as well, under the influence of similar wealthy donors–despite their party’s pro-labor platform on paper, better overall track record, and partial reliance on union funding.

Consider for example the issue of private sector labor law reform. It was nominally backed by Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden during their respective presidential campaigns over the last half century.

Once in office, not one of these Democrats, with the exception of Carter, got anywhere close to strengthening the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) via legislation. All of them did improve labor law enforcement through better NLRB appointments, administrative rule-making, and case-by-case decisions, with the Biden Administration being best at all three.

Overcoming fierce management opposition to statutory change–and, in the Carter era, a Senate filibuster– was always left to organized labor itself and its few reliable allies on Capitol Hill. Democrats in the White House never put labor law reform ahead of business-backed priorities like deregulation, privatization, or trade liberalization, with minimal protection for workers negatively impacted by it.

Early in Barack Obama’s first term, there was strong majority support, in both the House and Senate, for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). But his administration prioritized healthcare reform, over........

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