Can labor organizing provide the playbook for defending democracy?
Lessons from the global history of labor movements
There is no democratic equivalent to the authoritarian playbook, no simple formula for how to organize against a would-be autocrat. The strategy necessarily varies by context and country.1
If such a playbook existed, though, it might look a lot like labor organizing.
Strategically speaking, many labor organizers face a similar playing field as those working to organize against an authoritarian leader: an asymmetry of power between a large number of diffuse, less-powerful actors and a powerful, central authority.
That might explain why, in almost every country, labor unions tend to play a central role in broad civic coalitions against authoritarianism. It’s also why, regardless of where you sit in our democracy, you should see unions as important allies in the fight for democracy. Just like you don’t need to be a businessperson to believe that corporate leaders should stand up to authoritarianism. Or you don’t need to be religious to see the role faith leaders play in defending democracy.
If we're committed to building a successful anti-authoritarian coalition, there’s a lot we all can learn from the history of labor movements, here and abroad.
Workplace organizing has structural similarities to antiauthoritarian organizing
In the workplace, any individual employee doesn’t have a lot of leverage against management or ownership. With your job and livelihood at stake, the overwhelming incentive is to keep your head down. Complain about wages, factory conditions, or mismanagement by your bosses and you could find yourself out on the street.
Especially in centuries past, this imbalance led to fairly dystopian places. Dangerous working conditions, interminable hours, child labor, and depressed wages all effectively frayed the social fabric of democracy.
We see echoes of this same feeling of disempowerment and isolation among the law firms, universities, and corporations being targeted by the Trump administration. In the face of potential retaliation from the most powerful person in the country, the incentive to obey in advance can feel overwhelming. That’s what leads to the doom loop of anticipatory obedience.
Just like in labor organizing, though, the solution is simple: collective action.
Read more: Ian Bassin — Why collective action is the only way
When the less powerful actors band together and act as one — whether that’s workers or Trump’s targets — then they can flip the power asymmetry and set off a virtuous cycle.
Case in point: Solidarność evolves from a shipyard union to one of the most successful pro-democracy movements in history
On August 7, 1980, five months before she was due to retire, Anna Walentynowicz was fired from her job at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland for illegally participating in a trade union.2
Walentynowicz had been well-liked and a hard worker. She’d once been recognized as a "Hero of Socialist Labor.” If she could get fired, any one of them could be next to face financial ruin. The rational choice for any individual worker could well have been to cower. To obey.
But instead of obedience, Walentynowicz’s coworkers responded with outrage. Thousands of shipyard laborers went on strike. “Bring Anna back to work,” they shouted.
The strike spread rapidly to other factories and sectors, as pent-up grievances against the government’s growing repression exploded into public view. Within a month, the Lenin Shipyard organizers had secured official recognition from the government and rebranded themselves as Solidarność — “Solidarity.”
There were dark periods, especially in 1981 as the government responded with martial law, seeking to smash the movement and jail its leaders.
Read more: The hard-won hope of the long defeat.
But Solidarity persevered, and through the decade it evolved from just a labor union into a broad anti-authoritarian social movement spanning from trade unionists and anti-Soviet leftists to the Catholic Church, Polish nationalists, and pro-western idealists.
In 1989, Solidarity negotiated for and then won semi-free legislative elections. Finally, in 1990, one of Solidarity’s founders — Lech Wałęsa, a onetime Lenin Shipyard electrician — was elected president of a newly democratic Poland.
At its peak, Solidarity had over 10 million members peacefully organizing for a broader vision of pluralist democracy, not just narrow wage and labor issues. As Walentynowicz would later describe:
Our aim should not be to secure a somewhat thicker slice of bread today, even if this would make us happy; we must not forget what our real aim is … Our day-to-day motto should be: “Your problems are also my problems.” We must extend our friendship and strengthen our solidarity. These are not empty words. All of us should adopt an attitude of solidarity.
Lessons for antiauthoritarianism from the history of labor movements
Beyond the general principle of collective action, what can we all learn from the history of labor movements?
First, leadership lives in everyone. In workplace organizing, there’s no pre-ordained leader. Instead, unions are started by regular employees working together and organizing themselves.
For instance, in Cambodia, many of the most important recent labor and pro-democracy leaders have been everyday people who stepped up — garment workers, casino staff, even “impoverished middle-aged mothers and homemakers.” As Michael Angeloni writes in this week’s Democracy Atlas: Leadership lives in everyone.
Unexpected leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds have stepped forward to fight for change.
Whether or not their efforts are directly related to politics, Cambodia’s civic leaders embody the virtues of active and engaged citizens — a hallmark of democracy that stands in contrast to the passivity encouraged (and often enforced) by authoritarian regimes.
For democracy to survive, we can’t rely on someone else to save it. We each need to be ready to step up.
Second, build power incrementally. We don’t — yet — have a broad, regimented, and organized pro-democracy coalition in this country. (At least, not one that’s able to uniformly oppose an autocratic leader when he attacks some democratic institution or another.) In other words, we’re not at the “general strike” phase of organizing against autocracy.
Instead, things look more like the early days of a union organizing push — getting people to sign up and join the coalition, finding creative and incremental ways to show solidarity, building trust and connections. As long as each protest, each statement, each meeting builds power and momentum, it can add up to the formidable bulwark that our democracy requires.
Third, organize swiftly around key events. Successful workplace organizing is often carefully attuned to politics and public sentiment. Collective action on its own is sometimes not enough to achieve a movement’s goals — often it requires organizing around key moments, events, and narratives that capture the public’s attention.
For instance, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the 1911 disaster that killed 146 people, became a galvanizing moment for workplace safety after 350,000 people participated in a funeral march for the victims.
Or in 2024, when South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in an attempted self-coup, unions immediately called for a “strike to defend democracy.” At least 70,000 workers from major companies like Hyundai joined.
Finally, create space for both solidarity and difference. Organized labor is, famously, not a monolith. The ability to share both common ground and respect differences is a source of strength. It has helped the labor movement endure ups and downs — and to weather efforts to divide it by race and class.
In recent years, many labor activists have proven this in organizing to defend our democracy. For instance, labor leaders teamed up with some unusual allies to help protect a free and fair 2020 election. As the Horizon’s Project’s Louis Pascarella writes:
On Election Day 2020 The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States, teamed up with the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the National African American Clergy Network to call for the respect of election results and the peaceful transfer of power.
The same is true for the pro-democracy coalition.
We don't have to agree on everything — it's natural and healthy that we have different tactics and priorities. But we must come together in solidarity with those with whom we disagree when basic, fundamental institutions and rights are on the line.
Great example of all these lessons in practice? This video from a Boston union leader a few months ago. Come for the solidarity, stay for the accent.
Trump risks economic disaster in assaulting the Federal Reserve
This week, the president sought to seize control of the Federal Reserve.
How? It appears that William Pulte, a Trump loyalist who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, was tasked with digging deep into mortgage records to try to find a pretext for targeting and forcing out Lisa Cook, a key Federal Reserve governor and Biden appointee. This is textbook weaponization — but it’s also bigger than that.
As Amit Agarwal writes, this has potentially catastrophic financial implications for the country: Trump’s authoritarian assault on Fed independence could devastate the American economy.
Federal Reserve governors, like Lisa Cook, are essential regulators of the U.S. economy. Their responsibility under long-established law is to leverage their unique expertise and institutional independence to make crucial economic decisions for the long-term well-being of the American economy and the American people. Decisions that are good for the American economy may not always be good for politicians, which is why Congress made the Fed independent from partisan politics and protected Fed governors from removal.
Manufacturing blatantly pretextual allegations is not a real cause for dismissal. If the courts uphold the President’s authority to fire economic regulators for any reason — even a pretextual one — the guardrails that protect the stability of the markets will disappear.
Where things stand now
If you’re ready to go dark, here are three pieces that you should read on where our country stands in August of 2025:
Garrett Graff: America tips into fascism
Don Moynihan: The authoritarian checklist
Daniel Ziblatt: Warnings from Weimar: Why bargaining with authoritarians fails
Then, more importantly, read this from Ian Bassin on a mindset for this moment: The hard-won hope of the long defeat
I’m not writing to tell you that you’re wrong to feel this way. I’m writing to tell you that this feeling is a designed part of the assault we’re facing. And I’m writing to tell you that we are not the first to stand in this spot, staring into what looks like an abyss. In the history of those who came before us, we can find a map not for a specific strategy but for a resilient mindset.
What else we’re tracking:
More than 180 current and former FEMA officials published a letter warning how debilitating cuts to the agency could lead to a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina. In retaliation, the administration put them on leave.
Highly recommend this conversation between Kate Shaw and Lev Menand on the legal issues behind Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook.
Per the Seattle Times, federal agents raided firefighting crews actively fighting a wildfire in Washington. “You risked your life out here to save the community,” one firefighter said. “This is how they treat us.”
When modern-day authoritarians assemble troops, this is how they use them. Read Jon Steinman in Stars and Stripes.
Hundreds of economists from across the country have signed this open letter calling on Congress to uphold Federal Reserve independence.
A leading election denier has been appointed to a key role at the Department of Homeland Security overseeing elections infrastructure. ProPublica reports on the danger to future elections.
Trump is building his own paramilitary force. Watch, read, or listen to this interview between Ezra Klein and Radley Balko.
On September 10, join Protect Democracy, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and the Leadership Conference’s Center for Civil Rights and Technology to learn about ongoing federal efforts to access state administrative data — and the extremely high stakes of this battle over Americans’ highly sensitive personal information. Event details here.
As JB Pritzker, Brandon Johnson, Gavin Newsom, Michelle Wu, and other state and city leaders are standing up to the Trump administration, they’re tapping into a centurieslong tradition of pro-democracy resistance. Ansley Skipper explains: The long history behind Trump’s war against blue states and cities.
How you can help:
Know your rights. Help others know them too. Per Anna Dorman:
The AFL-CIO created excellent bi-lingual Know Your Rights resources for interacting with law enforcement and immigration officials (more language options available here).
Print out a stack and pass them out at your Labor Day weekend gatherings. Make sure everyone has a copy for themselves and a few to pass along. Even if a Labor Day cookout isn’t your thing, text the link to friends and family, post screenshots on social media, or leave them in the break room at work. Resources like these are more important than ever as ICE massively scales up their operations and the Trump administration is poised to continue their attempted takeover of U.S. cities.
Have a great long weekend. We’ll see you next week.
Instead, many of the lessons and accumulated wisdom from around the world tend to be nuanced and complex. See our ongoing Democracy Atlas series.
Ironic, of course, considering Poland’s ostensibly pro-worker communist government at the time. Authoritarian governments are uniformly not what they claim to be.