Even Half of Republicans Like Unions

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In public sentiment, though not yet in membership numbers, labor is back. The Gallup organization’s annual Labor Day poll on the approval rating of unions came out last week and showed unions viewed favorably by 65 percent of the American people—their highest rating in the past 17 years. Fully 83 percent of Democrats approved of unions, as did 64 percent of independents and even 45 percent of Republicans.

It’s that Republican number that should interest us the most, because nothing so reveals the gap between the GOP rank and file—which, as we all know, includes a large share of working-class whites—and Republican elected officials. While 45 percent of the Republican base favors unions, not even 4.5 percent of Republicans in office do; I’m not even confident that 0.45 percent of those Republican electeds do. On this issue in particular, Republican pols follow only the money.

And yet, that 45 percent support isn’t a one-off anomaly. It’s of a piece with the sizable share of Republicans who vote to raise their state’s minimum wage when it’s on the ballot, and those who vote to expand Medicaid—in both cases, also against the wishes of their GOP elected officials, whose legislative decrees they’re overriding at the ballot box.

In short, when confronted with a question of boosting working people’s income, benefits, and power, a non-negligible share of Republicans come down on working people’s side—at least, so long as those questions don’t also involve issues of race or gender or immigration status. The problem for progressives and Democrats (two partially overlapping but nonetheless distinct categories) is that Republicans have largely succeeded in making racial, gender, and immigration-related fears and anger loom larger than class concerns in their members’ minds—even if those members come from a class that would benefit from unionization, higher wages, and more affordable and comprehensive health insurance.

But that 45 percent Republican support should also mean that Democrats—if they win the White House and both houses of Congress in November—should have no hesitation (as some Democratic senators have had over the past 60 years) to reform labor law so that it’s possible for Americans to join unions again without fear of their employer’s retribution. When virtually half the Republicans like unions, there’s no excuse for Blue Dog union aversion.

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