RECOMMENDED READING
Donald Trump won the presidency thanks largely to a strong showing among working-class whites. But itās never been clear what, if anything, this meant for conservativesā relationship with organized labor.
As I noted within a month of Trumpās election for The American Conservative, even The Donald himself didnāt adopt the unionsā political stances during the campaign. He said, for example, that he supported right-to-work laws. Despite his success with the white working class, he lost union households in general by eight points (which, to be fair, was a huge improvement on the 20-point losses suffered by other recent GOP presidential candidates). His administration hasnāt exactly been āpro-laborā as the unions would define it, either: As Iāve discussed in this space, his National Labor Relations Board has done about what youād expect from one controlled by Republican appointees, undoing much of what the Obama NLRB put together.
Nonetheless, some populist and āreformā conservatives, led by Oren Cass of the think tank American Compass, recently put together a statement urging the Right to support labor reforms. These thinkers donāt support the status quo, but they would like to see a new system where labor has a place at the economic table.
In this piece Iād like to explain the way things work now, the problems with it, and the alternatives these folks suggest.
Recommended Reading
Oren Cass Joins Global Roaming
Oren Cass joins hosts Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald for a feisty interview on ABCR Radio Nationals’s “Global Roaming”
Josh Hawley and the Republican Effort to Love Labor
The senator, like Vice-President J. D. Vance, appears to be positioning himself as Trumpās heir, a right-wing populist who can appeal to working-class voters in the MAGA base.
Why we care about the conclave
The perceived stability of Catholicism is attractive in an exhausting world of upheaval.