Republicans are falling into a familiar trap. From President Trump to Vice President JD Vance to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a growing number of party leaders have come to believe that coercive labor unions are a permanent part of American politics, so the Republicans might as well forge an uneasy truce if not an outright alliance with them.
To build that bridge, Hawley released his first of several promised pro-union bills in early March. The thinking seems to be: If labor unions are here to stay, why not put political expediency ahead of deeply held Republican principles like worker freedom and equal opportunity?
Fifty years ago, Republicans made a similar argument about another kind of union — the Soviet variety. In the mid-1970s, Republican leaders, along with the Democratic Party and virtually the entire foreign policy establishment, assumed the Soviet Union was here to stay. Two successive Republican presidents — Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford — pursued a policy of détente with a coercive regime that rejected American principles and was actively working toward America’s destruction. What other choice did they have, if the Soviet Union wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon?
One Republican knew better. Ronald Reagan had no interest in playing nice with the Soviet Union. I recently heard William Inboden, author of the Reagan biography “The Peacemaker,” explain the 40th president’s thinking. Like other Republicans (and like Democrats, too), Reagan believed that two forces were at play. First, the Soviet Union was a fact of life — a regime that existed whether he liked it or not. Second, the U.S. and the USSR were locked in a battle of ideas — a battle between freedom and tyranny. But what made Reagan different was that he believed the second force was more important and powerful than the first.
The only reason the Soviet Union continued to exist was because liberty-loving nations didn’t believe freedom could truly triumph over tyranny. But Reagan did believe in freedom’s strength, which is why he marshaled America’s economic and military might to pressure the Soviet Union into collapse. His philosophy was summed up in his famous saying, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” His vision was widely derided as impossible, yet the Berlin Wall fell within a decade of Reagan’s election to the White House.
The Soviet Union was obviously a different beast from labor unions, which at their best give workers a voice. But for at least 75 years, American unions have given in to their worst instinct of coercion. Given how long they’ve been around, it’s no wonder that a growing number of Republicans think they’ll always be here, though unions represent a smaller share of the workforce with every passing year — now 9.9 percent, the lowest in recorded history.
These Republicans have it backward. As Reagan showed with the Soviet Union, America doesn’t have to blindly accept the eternal existence of something antithetical to our national principles. To the contrary, applying those principles — and vigorously reminding the American people of their power and truth — can ensure their victory over injustice.
In the case of unions, that means fundamentally reforming the current labor model. This doesn’t mean going back to the bad old days, when unions were treated as a criminal conspiracy. But it does mean ending the legal favoritism that allows unions to coerce workers, control businesses and advance their selfish interests at the expense of everyone else. The Republican goal should be to make unions earnestly compete for workers’ support, with neither a monopoly in the workplace nor restrictions on workers’ ability to choose the union that’s best for them.
When is the last time Republicans forcefully advanced such a principled vision? Even before the recent backsliding, Republican leaders rarely made the moral case against forced unionization. Sure, they broadly supported policies that would have empowered workers, and most Republicans still do. But with few exceptions, the party tip-toed around the real stakes. If union coercion is wrong, then anyone who loves freedom has a duty to fight it — without apology and without quarter.
Reagan showed that a principled approach can work, and Republicans may get another opportunity sooner than they realize. Last year, a federal court ruled that the National Labor Relations Board — and by extension, the labor law that governs America’s labor-union framework — is unconstitutional. This case seems destined to end up at the Supreme Court. If the justices strike down the law, will Trump and Republicans side with the unions they’re trying to appease?
Or will they stand with American workers against union coercion, seeking to end injustice the same way Reagan defeated the Soviet Union?
Joseph G. Lehman is president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
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