Big Labor's Big Shift

Why Big Labor moved to the right—and the fight ahead for the left to win back America’s working class

Unions helped construct the American middle class, defeat Jim Crow, and advance progressive rights, but in Trump’s America, the labor movement is changing. In Big Labor's Big Shift, journalist Nathan Bomey explores how Big Labor and the working class are no longer an automatic ally of the American left.

Fueled by decades of economic decline, political disillusionment, and cultural disenfranchisement, new politically nebulous and economically populist leaders in the movement are building a powerful new movement based on class warfare that prizes wage and benefit gains over traditional progressive priorities. Through original reporting and first-hand interviews, Bomey traces key events that have led to this political shift.

Bomey reveals:

-At the Teamsters, president Sean O’Brien is cozying up to Donald Trump and blasting Democrats as tools of big business, even showing up at the Republican National Convention to deliver his message.

-At the United Auto Workers, president Shawn Fain is seizing an opportunity to break the free trade consensus in Washington. The devout Christian, who wields religious rhetoric from the stump, is aligning with the Trump White House on tariffs and blasting Democrats for aggressively pursuing electric vehicles to fight climate change.

Bomey shows how the two interconnected phenomena represent a massive political realignment—not just along cultural and nationalism lines, but of the working class itself away from its historic roots in the Democratic party.

Urgent and compelling, Big Labor's Big Shift encapsulates the fight for the soul of the union movement.