Can American Labor Law Be Renewed?
New polling reveals bipartisan support for labor reforms.
By Daniel Kishi, policy advisor at American Compass.
Not too long ago, the notion that Republicans might support reforms to labor law that could benefit labor unions and their current and prospective members would have been dismissed as fanciful thinking.
But times are changing.
Working-class Americans, once the bedrock of the Democrats’ political base, have continued their shift into the Republican Party, a trend that began with the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. This electoral realignment has led Republicans to reconsider their relationship with the American labor movement, evidenced by Teamsters President Sean O’Brien’s primetime address at the 2024 Republican National Convention, his successful campaign in support of labor-friendly Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination as Secretary of the Department of Labor, and a growing willingness among congressional Republicans to champion pro-labor legislation supported by unions.
To honor the trust working-class Americans have placed in their party, and to cement them as a permanent part of their coalition, they should do what Democrats have failed to do—and what the Republican Party of yesteryear was actively hostile to: enact bipartisan labor reform that the working class supports.
Whatever one’s view of the matter, few would dispute that American labor law is ossified.
In 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA) into law, the foundational statute of America’s labor-management relations that provides workers in the private sector the right to organize, join a union, and collectively bargain with their employer. The legislation injected democratic principles into the workplace, tried to balance power between employers and workers after widespread labor unrest, and, in so doing, facilitated industrial peace.
Despite substantial changes to the U.S. economy in the intervening nine decades, Congress has enacted only two major amendments to the NLRA, both of which addressed what it saw as excessive union power. In 1947, Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibited certain union activities such as secondary boycotts; permitted states to pass right-to-work laws, which forbid arrangements where a worker must pay union dues as a condition of employment at a unionized company; and empowered the president to intervene in labor disputes he determines to be a threat to national security. In 1959, in response to allegations of union corruption, Congress passed the Landrum-Griffin Act, which imposed transparency measures to mitigate misconduct and bolster democratic accountability.
Although other factors—including international labor arbitrage and excessive union politicking—have been contributing factors, the labor movement points to Congress’s inability to amend the labor law in more than two generations and its failure to combat employers’ anti-union tactics as the principal reason union density declined from more than a third of private-sector workers in 1945 to a record low of less than six percent in 2024. The precipitous decline of unionism undermined the bargaining power of American workers to secure wages and conditions that could support a family, a core concern of conservative economic policy.
Can American labor law be renewed? If the past is prologue, reform efforts will face an uphill battle.
In President Barack Obama’s first year in the White House, Democrats held unified government control, including a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. However, believing they had a broad public mandate to pass health care reform, they used their political capital to enact the Affordable Care Act, and failed to vote on the Employer Free Choice Act, organized labor’s top legislative priority, before Senator Ted Kennedy died and was replaced by a Republican, obstructing the path to the president’s desk.
Most recently, Democrats held control of the White House and both chambers of Congress from 2021 to 2023. The House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, the omnibus labor reform package championed by unions. However, then-Majority Leader Schumer never put it, or any other labor legislation, on the floor for an up or down vote during the four years he controlled the Senate, suggesting that even members of his own party opposed certain provisions or viewed them as political liabilities.
These reform efforts suffered a fatal flaw: Organized labor and its allies in Congress tried to advance them on an effective party-line basis without meaningful negotiations with Republicans. The success of this strategy hinged on Democrats holding a trifecta and steamrolling opposition across the finish line.
That strategy was a failure. President Trump is in the White House, serving his second term. Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Democrats are in the political wilderness with historically low approval ratings and arguably face an insurmountable path to reclaiming the Senate majority.
The question, then, is not whether American labor law can be renewed; rather, it’s whether Republicans, to advance the interests of the working-class voters who put them into office, are interested in and capable of doing so on a bipartisan basis.
New polling suggests there’s an appetite for just that.
American Compass partnered with YouGov to survey 1,000 Americans about their views on organized labor and reforms to labor law, including seven discrete provisions of the PRO Act, the reform package that failed to advance during the Biden administration, which would make it easier for workers to join a union and collectively bargain with their employer. The results indicate that Republican voters are far more favorable to unions and their preferred reforms than conventional wisdom might assume and that the working class does not universally support the measures on labor’s legislative wishlist.
Overall, respondents hold a net favorable view of unions (+36%), which is calculated as the share with very or somewhat favorable views minus the share with very or somewhat unfavorable views. This net favorability holds among Republican respondents (+8%). However, a closer look at the data underscores an important generational divide: younger Republicans (born in 1980 or later) hold overwhelmingly positive views (+38%), a strength of sentiment that aligns with the general public. These results affirm that younger Republicans are embracing policy positions that their older counterparts viewed as heretical.
Democratic respondents, perhaps unsurprisingly, generally support the seven labor reforms surveyed. Republicans are decidedly mixed. They hold negative views of the reforms that arguably impede on worker autonomy and privacy, including those that would eliminate state right-to-work laws, permit union authorization if a majority of workers sign union authorization cards (a mechanism commonly referred to as “card check,” which would override the traditional secret ballot process), and mandate disclosure of personal contact information (phone numbers, home addresses) to unions during organizing campaigns.
But Republican respondents strongly support three of the proposed reforms, suggesting they could serve as the basis of bipartisan reform.
Many Americans do not know their rights under labor law or realize they have protections regardless of whether they are in a union. Republicans hold a net favorable view (+45%) of the proposal that would require employers to display visible notices in the workplace explaining their employees’ rights under labor law, including the right to unionize and bargain collectively.
Under current law, an employer must bargain with the union after workers vote to unionize, but they are not obligated to finalize a collective bargaining agreement that improves terms and conditions of employment. Oftentimes, negotiations will drag on for more than a year, frustrating workers and defeating the point of having a union. Republicans hold a net favorable view (+29%) of the proposal that would mandate arbitration of a first contract if no contract is agreed upon within four months of the union winning recognition.
Discharging a worker involved in an organizing campaign or threatening to close or offshore a business if workers vote to unionize are among unfair labor practices forbidden by current law; however, the enforcement is minimal: penalties for violating the rule are negligible, effectively incentive lawbreaking. Republicans hold a net favorable view (+19%) of the proposal that would impose real penalties on employers who break the law.
The kicker: working-class respondents—those without a four-year degree and household income of $30,000 to $80,000—perceive the same reforms more and less favorably as Republican ones.
Republicans in Congress should take note. If they want to prove their credibility as the party of the working class, one way to start would be to listen to what the working class—the very people American labor law purports to serve—want. If they do, they will realize that they support some of the reforms that Republicans have long resisted, reject others that Democrats have long demanded, and are signaling the way forward for bipartisan labor law reform that responds to their concerns.