Earlier this year, a member of the Federalist Society posted an article raising the alarm about an ambitious proposal to reshape federal labor law. The proposal, titled “A Pro-Worker Framework for the 119th U.S. Congress,” calls for introducing civil penalties to deter employers from engaging in unfair labor practices. It advocates banning so-called captive-audience meetings—gatherings that employees are forced to attend—that companies have used to spread anti-union messages. It also outlines ways to expedite union elections and the implementation of collective-bargaining agreements, which employers frequently delay. With Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, the odds of enacting such union-friendly reforms may appear remote. But the blogger at the Federalist Society was concerned because, as he noted with dismay, the author of the proposal is himself a prominent Republican, Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri.
Back in 2021, a photographer snapped a picture of Hawley as he raised his fist to salute protesters outside the Capitol on January 6th. (After some of them stormed the building, Hawley, in video later released by the January 6th Committee, was seen fleeing for cover.) That image, and Hawley’s subsequent refusal to certify the results of the Electoral College, would permanently tarnish his reputation, many observers thought at the time. But Hawley, like Donald Trump, was returned to office in the last election, one in which Trump carried working-class voters (defined as those without a college degree) by a fourteen-point margin. Along with Vice-President J. D. Vance, Hawley now appears to be positioning himself as Trump’s heir, a right-wing populist who can appeal to voters in the MAGA base. On April 15th—Tax Day—Hawley published an op-ed in the Washington Post that called for expanding tax relief for families who don’t earn enough to qualify for benefits such as the mortgage-tax deduction. A few weeks later, he published another op-ed, this one in the Times, assailing “corporatist Republicans” who have insisted that Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill must include large cuts to social-insurance programs, including Medicaid.
“That argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal,” Hawley wrote. Instead of slashing a program that millions of low-income families rely on, he affirmed, Republicans should be pushing to cap prescription-drug costs. To achieve this goal, Hawley had joined Senator Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, to introduce a bill that would impose financial penalties on pharmaceutical companies that sell products in the U.S. at prices that exceed the average in countries such as Germany and Canada, where drugs are far cheaper. Hawley is also the co-sponsor, with Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, of the Faster Labor Contracts Act, which would amend the National Labor Relations Act to require employers to begin negotiating with newly unionized workers within ten days. The bill would also send disputes to binding arbitration if a contract is not reached within a hundred and twenty days.
Skeptics may be forgiven for wondering whether Hawley’s commitment to the working class is genuine. Back in 2018, when he was Missouri’s attorney general, he joined a multistate lawsuit that sought to nullify the Affordable Care Act, a step that would have deprived millions of low-income people of Medicaid benefits and removed protections for individuals with preëxisting conditions. Later that year, when he ran for the Senate, Hawley, the son of a banker, opposed a ballot measure that proposed incrementally raising the minimum wage in Missouri to twelve dollars an hour. More recently, under President Joe Biden, he refrained from endorsing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which contained many of the same provisions—a ban on captive-audience meetings, tougher penalties on employers for violating workers’ rights—that he now supports. A former Democratic staffer I spoke to said that he thought Hawley’s embrace of more pro-worker policies was sincere and grew out of his concerns about Big Tech companies such as Meta, whose concentrated power has long alarmed him. (In another recent op-ed, Hawley wrote, “Either the government will break up these behemoths and return to the people the power they have seized, or the corporations will effectively be the government for the nation.”) Others are less convinced. After Hawley appeared on the picket line at a Teamsters’ strike in Missouri last year, Jim Kabell, a retired organizer, accused him of engaging in “the most shameful political theater I’ve ever seen.” Kabell recalled going to Hawley’s office in Washington, D.C., with other union members on three occasions to ask for his support. “Hawley and his staff rejected our request for help each time,” he wrote in the Kansas City Star.
But even those who question Hawley’s motives don’t doubt his ambition, particularly as jockeying for 2028 begins. One thing he appears to recognize is that siding with unions has become popular even on the right. In March, American Compass, a conservative think tank, and YouGov conducted a survey that illustrated this fact. Among Republican respondents, the poll found that labor unions had a net favorability of eight percentage points. Among young Republicans, defined as those born after 1980, the margin was thirty-eight points. Young Republicans also overwhelmingly backed several provisions of the PRO Act that the survey tested, such as expediting the collective-bargaining process, posting information about labor rights in workplaces, and penalizing companies that violate the law.
Daniel Kishi, a policy adviser at American Compass and a former aide to Hawley, told me that the generational divide captured by the survey is mirrored among Republican elected officials, with those who entered office after the 2008 financial crisis—such as Hawley and Vance—more likely to view unfettered markets skeptically and to see rank-and-file union members as potential supporters. These officials understand that, while voters in union households still tend to back Democrats, the gap has narrowed, a dynamic that has enabled Trump to win states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Some Republicans are even beginning to see the labor movement’s leaders as allies, rather than as Democratic operatives who will turn out the vote for their opponents—in particular Sean O’Brien, the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who spoke at the Republican National Convention this past summer. Kishi believes that enacting some of the pro-union reforms that drew support from young Republicans in the American Compass survey could solidify the political realignment that has occurred in recent years, leading more and more blue-collar workers to view the Republican Party as their home.
Thus far, of course, what the Trump Administration has prioritized is not passing such reforms but selling influence to wealthy patrons and granting unchecked power to billionaires including Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency fired thousands of federal employees who are union members. On March 27th, Trump issued an executive order that cancelled the union contracts of nearly a million federal workers. The order is “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history,” the labor historian Joseph McCartin recently told the Center for American Progress, which has estimated that it ended collective-bargaining rights for one of every fifteen workers currently protected by a union contract. Trump’s tax-and-spending bill contains a few measures designed to appeal to low-income workers, such as eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. But assessments by the Congressional Budget Office and other nonpartisan sources show that the benefits will go mainly to the wealthiest households, while the poorest ten per cent of Americans will see their income decline.
Steve Rosenthal, the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that the emergence of Republicans like Hawley who are willing to denounce Medicaid cuts and walk picket lines was welcome. (As a senator, Vance joined the picket line at a U.A.W. strike in Ohio and fist-bumped the Democratic congresswoman Marcy Kaptur—a long-standing labor champion—who asked him, “First time here?” “First time here, yeah,” he said.) But Rosenthal expressed skepticism that Hawley could convince more than a handful of his peers in the Senate to support a bill such as the Faster Labor Contracts Act, much less find enough Republicans to back it in the House of Representatives. He also maintained that standing with workers and unions requires speaking up when the Trump Administration “tears up the union rights of a million federal workers” and turns public agencies—including the Department of Labor—over to tech oligarchs. “Hawley is awfully silent about that,” he said.
Yet Rosenthal, like other labor strategists I spoke with, cautioned Democrats not to underestimate the appeal of right-wing populists such as Hawley, particularly at a time when many working-class voters have come to doubt whether the Democratic Party will fight for them. He would get no argument about this from Teamster president Sean O’Brien, who told me he had no regrets about addressing the Republican National Committee this past summer, an act that infuriated some of his peers—John Palmer, a Teamster vice-president, accused him of normalizing “the most anti-union party and President of my lifetime”—but that has clearly endeared him to the Trump Administration, which he said regularly consulted him about policies of relevance to his members. “We’ve never had that with any other Administration,” he said. When I mentioned the federal workers who had been fired and stripped of their collective-bargaining rights, he acknowledged that some union members were “not happy.” Numerous scholars regard Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, as the most pro-labor President since Franklin Roosevelt, citing the union jobs that his domestic-spending programs created and the staunch workers’-rights advocates he appointed to run agencies like the N.L.R.B. But O’Brien expressed little nostalgia for the days when Democrats held power. After Barack Obama was elected, he recalled, the Democratic Party had control of every branch of the federal government, including a supermajority in the Senate, raising hopes in the labor movement that it would pass the Employee Free Choice Act, an early version of the PRO Act. But the Obama Administration chose to prioritize health-care reform, and the legislation stalled.
More recently, in June of last year, thirty-four senators sent a letter to Andy Jassy, the C.E.O. of Amazon, addressing allegations that the company mistreated drivers in its Delivery Service Partner program. Amazon had refused to bargain with these workers, claiming they are employees of independent companies with whom it contracts. The Teamsters, who have been trying to organize the drivers, have argued that Amazon is a co-employer, one that effectively controls the delivery service and therefore has responsibility for its drivers’ work conditions, a claim that the National Labor Relations Board has affirmed. “Amazon is facing allegations of flagrant violations of the National Labor Relations Act,” the letter noted.
O’Brien told me that the union had reached out to Charles Schumer, who was the Democratic Majority Leader at the time, to get his support, but received no response. “He’s a warrior for the working-class, supposedly,” O’Brien said. Schumer’s office said that the Senator typically didn’t sign onto large group letters when he was Majority Leader, and pointed to an array of policies, from a pension reform that gave six hundred thousand Teamsters greater retirement security to infrastructure investments that generated high-paying union jobs, which he had delivered on, often by overcoming Republican opposition.
Thirty Democratic senators, along with Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent, did sign the letter. They were joined by three Republicans: Roger Marshall, of Kansas—and J. D. Vance, and Josh Hawley. ♦
