This week, Egberto and I talked with Carl Rosen, who recently retired as General President of the UE (United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America).
A lightly edited transcript is available here. We covered many things, including:
§ the difference, as Carl sees it, between a more bottom-up, rank-and-file, independent union like the UE, and the more top-down, officer-dominated unions in the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations;
§ the role of rank-and-file—what Carl called “distributed”—union organizing in winning collective bargaining rights for workers who want to be in a union but aren’t;
§ the assistance that the UE’s Emergency Workers’ Organizing Committee (EWOC) can provide anyone who wants to organize a union at their workplace;
§ the recent success the UE has had with its approach, especially among younger workers in higher education; and, finally,
§ the importance of and prospects for independent political action by the US labor movement, which is the only labor movement in a democratic country everywhere else in the world without its own independent labor or social democratic political party.
There is much more to say about all these things, but I shall leave most of them aside for now. You are invited to listen to the show or scan its edited transcript for more of our conversation.
Instead, I will comment on just one of the topics we discussed: Will the overall circumstances of the US labor movement and American working families change if the Democrats return to power?
For some, yes; but not for all. A little, sure; but not enough. Because neither party is deeply and truly loyal to their working-class voters. On the contrary, they are all message and no follow-through. They march to the beat of their donors, not their voters.
This is not to say that Democratic victories won’t send a message and aren’t to be wished for. The Trump administration has launched unnecessary wars against its own people as well as other nations, taking the lives of thousands and disrupting the lives of millions more.
Even so, some people continue to defend the administration’s unlawful actions as unfortunate excesses and keep insisting that we have never been better off or headed in a better direction. Well, crypto-fanatics and AI insiders, maybe. But everyone else? Not so fast!
So, I will be voting Democratic in a couple of weeks, and I hope everyone else does, too, except where it makes sense to do otherwise. For example, in Nebraska, where one can vote for the independent trade union candidate, Dan Osborn. Or in Idaho, where one can vote for Todd Achilles.
As for me, it will be Democrats all the way down, except in a local race where I have an opportunity to register my dislike of one-party rule by voting for the only Republican candidate competing for one of two open seats on our town council, all of which are otherwise held by Democrats!
But voting for Democratic candidates and hoping for a refreshing Blue Wave to turn back the toxic Red Tide does not mean thinking the Democratic Party will either turn the country around or deliver on its promises.
Even if the Democrats control Congress, they won’t pass the PRO Act or anything else of real consequence. They have had numerous chances to do so and didn’t. They also won’t do anything they haven’t already tried to raise wages or provide affordable healthcare, housing, education, or transportation.
Are they the best we can do? The economy we have works reasonably well for some of us. But what about the rest of us? What about the millions who are currently under-paid, over-worked, and one illness or layoff away from catastrophe? We need liberty and justice for all, not just for some.
And don’t say, I’m dreaming! If we can build machines that mimic human speech, we can have an economy that provides without fear or favor a decent standard of living for all!
We need as much policy focus on a real economy that enables people to provide and care for one another as we have on the money economy that forces people into an endless competitive scramble to pick each other’s pocket.
We need both. Either one without the other is not enough. A functioning real economy that meets needs is an essential counterbalance to the money economy that fuels our search for miraculous machines. By all means, innovate. But by no means, impoverish.
The only way to have what we need is to build a movement for structural and not just cosmetic change.
For one thing, we need a government for the people, which requires a government by the people.
There are enough millionaires in Congress! We need more people there who know what it takes to feed, cloth, shelter, house, and care for people. Folks who know what it’s like to get dirty at work—and I don’t mean unethical; I mean covered in grime.
We need working people in every city hall, council chamber, state house, and legislature in the country. And we need them to put their heads together with others of the best and brightest to figure out what it takes actually to ensure “liberty and justice for all.”
Then we need them to do it.
We will only get there when the unions like the UE, and also churches, co-ops, neighborhoods, community-based organizations, and progressive non-profits stop waiting for the parties of the moneyed classes to do something for the people, and challenge the Money Power for control.
People Power, not Money Power! Read Les Leopold, We Need a Party of Our Own! (2026), and his Substack column, “Wall Streets’s War on Workers: We Need a Party of Our Own.” And stay tuned.