The Anti-White Turn of the Unions

Prioritizing anyone but their own members

Jun 12, 2024

Labor unions in the United States have a history that is as rich and storied as the nation itself. Unions pushed for the 40-hour work week as far back as 1917, and they worked with and against corporate America to enshrine labor standards, wage standards, cost of living contracts, and much more over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today union membership in the United States looks radically different than even 60 years ago.

Union membership peaked in the mid-1950s, with nearly 35% of the American workforce being unionized. The income share of the top 1% of earners was barely 5% of the national income, and the middle class was experiencing its golden age. Today however, union membership sits at barely 10%, the wealthy 1% garner more than 20% of the national income, and the unions themselves are more concerned with diversity, multiculturalism, and a liberal social agenda than they are fighting for the White men and women who once comprised their ranks.

Still, there are benefits to unions even in the modern era. Union members are three times more likely to have defined benefit retirement plans, and more likely overall to be offered any retirement plan. Union members have much better medical benefits and higher participation rates in those plans, union members have more paid sick leave, more life insurance coverage, and are even much more likely to continue being paid while on leave for jury duty.

Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of these upsides are increasingly not the White Americans who were founded by the nation and the unions which were once a strong feature of national life. Today America’s unions are systematically altering both policy and practice in order to cut White Americans out of the employment market, bargaining opportunities, and other opportunities around education and skill attainment.

In a 2023 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) policy brief the union touts the American Jobs Plan and pledges its support to “diversity efforts” in both training and hiring. The IBEW explicitly states it will seek to train and prioritize workers who are minority and female. This brief included a joint statement with the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), an association of independent and corporate electrical contractors. In this way, the entire electrical industry, which is overwhelmingly White and nearly 98% male, has pledged to systematically cut out its own membership.

Similarly, 68% of the manufacturing workforce is White and in some areas such as boundary work, metal forging, and advanced manufacturing the workforce can approach 80-85% White. Despite this, however, the manufacturing unions have turned their back on the White working class which sustained them for more than two centuries, and are embracing a diversification program that cuts Whites out of opportunity by definition.

The North America's Building Trades Unions, a coalition of 14 unions representing tradesmen across the construction sector, commissioned a 2023 study that found that the internal programs of these unions had been “highly successful” in advancing the cause of minorities first. The number of Hispanics entering the training programs of these unions is 29.4% as of 2019, a number which is 61% higher than the Hispanic share of the overall population. The study also found that half of priority hiring for apprentices has been to the benefit of minorities before others.

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Demographic changes have brought about more than simple policy changes within unions, they have also decreased union membership overall. Alex Nowrasteh and his coauthors at the libertarian CATO Institute found that as much as 30% of the decline in union membership in the United States can be attributed to the rapid growth of the immigrant population in the country.

To quote:

"We found this happens because immigrants have a lower preference for unionization and because immigrants increase diversity in the workforce that, in turn, decreases solidarity among workers and raises the transaction costs of forming unions,"

This CATO Institute finding also builds upon a body of evidence collected by Amazon which was collected internally. This data shows that stores with high levels of racial and ethnic diversity are much less likely to unionize. Racial diversity, particularly when brought about by immigration, is also widely acknowledged to reduce wage and income rates in Western societies.

It should come as no surprise then that the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) pushes very hard for mass immigration and diversity. The AFL-CIO advocates for citizenship to be given to every illegal immigrant in the United States, and promotes union membership as a ‘natural home’ for new immigrants to the country, as opposed to a natural home for the working men and women of America.

Gender diversity also hurts the wages and productivity of workers in ‘traditional’ industries in Western societies. The introduction of women to industries requiring large amounts of manual labor, dexterity, coordination, and navigation, and which have been traditionally male results in inevitably lower wages and a radically altered working environment for these men. A Belgian study went into great detail about how the productivity, creativity, and advancement opportunities for the traditionally male workforce dry up as gender diversity increases.

A gender diversity which, as seen above, unions are pushing very hard for.

It is worth noting here, however, that the addition of women proves to be a major asset to industries that focus on technological and knowledge-based concepts.

Yet, unions continue to push diversity down upon the very White population that they once represented.

In a final example, we can look at the National Education Association (NEA) and its anti-White policies. Despite the fact that 80% of America’s public school educators are White the NEA pushes a strong pro-diversity message that focuses on preferential education, recruitment, and hiring practices for minorities. The NEA supports a variety of programs, both internal to and external to the organization, which prioritize people of color over Whites. The union even decries the better performance of White students and suggests that White education attainment is due to some form of institutional racism against minority students, rather than entertaining that minority students may simply not attain as highly as their White peers.

Conclusion:

America’s unions have abandoned the White population of the United States in much the same way that the state, media, and corporate world have done so. Whites are left with few advocates and an unrelenting stream of policies and preferences that act against them and in favor of recently imported populations of minorities.

But, if something such as ALANA (African, Latino, Asian, and Native American), a rank-and-file movement of educators of color—organized through the Massachusetts Teachers Association, can exist then so can organizations that do the same for White Americans.

Organizing such groups would be a major advancement for Whites. For if the courts strike them down then there will be yet more evidence of systematic anti-Whiteness, and if they are allowed to exist Whites can begin pushback against these anti-White labor and union policies.

Whites deserve a safe, prosperous, and dynamic work environment the same as anyone else.