Unions Should Hop on the DSA Train

New York, where Mamdani’s victory in the mayor’s race last year kicked off DSA’s ballooning national profile in earnest, is a useful preview of where this is all going. When Mamdani first entered the Democratic primary, he was considered a fringe candidate. Scandal-ridden former governor Andrew Cuomo was considered the safe, establishment choice. Even as Mamdani rose in the polls in the months leading up to Election Day, he only attracted endorsements from a small number of local unions, like UAW Region 9A, whose leaders had preexisting ties with the Left. The city’s biggest and most powerful unions almost all either endorsed Cuomo (1199 SEIU, 32BJ SEIU, the Hotel Workers and more) or, like the United Federation of Teachers, endorsed no one at all in the primary, unable to bring themselves to go on record for a self-declared socialist even as his chances began to look more plausible. 

After Mamdani won the primary and established himself as the new king of New York City’s Democratic Party, all of those big unions proceeded to endorse him. A similar process played out this year with the DSA (and Zohran)-backed congressional candidates running in the city’s primaries. Even Claire Valdez, a former UAW organizer, drew endorsements only from a minority of left-leaning unions, while her opponent, Antonio Reynoso, garnered the endorsements of the who’s who of major New York unions. Sure, Reynoso is a strong progressive himself, and would have likely been as pro-labor as anyone in Congress. But Valdez, and seven other DSA candidates in the city, won. Without the formal backing of the bulk of organized labor. 

The dynamic was clear. As in most places, New York City’s biggest unions are not really ​“progressive” as much as they are full members of the Democratic Party power structure. This is not inherently bad — that’s where the power tends to be, and a party where unions are an influential cornerstone is somewhat less susceptible to the lures of high-finance lobbying. Still, being members of the establishment means an aversion to valuing ideology over membership in the club. Despite the fact that DSA candidates are extremely pro-union — you could hardly visit a picket line in the city over the past year without tripping over Mamdani or his allies — the actual unions could not bring themselves to endorse any of them until they proved the hard way that they can defeat their more centrist opponents at the ballot box. You could call this political common sense by the unions. You could also call it conservatism. You could also call it a missed opportunity.

Because, although there have been no indications so far that DSA candidates are the vindictive type, it is a bit dispiriting that unions lacked the foresight and courage to get behind the most labor-movement-friendly candidates in these races until they were more or less forced to do so by process of elimination. There are two reasons to be disappointed by this. One, of course, is ideological: it would be nice if America’s unions were able to make a principled decision to back the candidates who most accurately understand the reality of where the battle between labor and capital stands. (Maybe one day!) The other reason is less utopian: DSA’s rising power is not going to stop any time soon, and the unions brave enough to get on board now will have a first-mover political advantage that will be lost to their more reluctant brethren.

I’m not talking about any dreamy anticapitalist pipe dream here. I’m talking about tangible power politics. The good news is that the window of opportunity for unions has not closed. DSA candidates, who understand that a revived labor movement is necessary to achieve the Left’s goals, are all newly elected. They are in desperate need of strong working relationships with the unions that have, until now, aligned themselves with the mainstream Democrats the DSA people just defeated. And the unions, whose decades-long institutional entrenchment with the Democratic Party has not produced any tangible revival for labor, are in desperate need of fresh, new energy and ideas. Many union members are tired of the Democratic establishment. Understandably. The solution for union leaders is not to start playing footsie with fascists. It is, instead, to look to the rising power of the Left and recognize the fact that they can help change the Democratic Party for the better. 

This, by the way, is the very same dynamic that was present when Bernie Sanders’ presidential run in 2016 shocked many D.C. creatures with its popularity. Forward-thinking unions then had an opportunity to get on board with Bernie, who was the truest believer in the labor movement. But unions could not see past the perceived safety of the establishment choice, chose to overwhelmingly back Hillary Clinton, and ended up with nothing.

In 2026, Bernie’s movement has had a decade to organize and flourish. We are seeing the same choice again, writ large. Organized labor’s timidity, its unwillingness to jump in with both feet and try to push the Left’s momentum forward, is not only a backward ideological choice — it is a failure to grasp which way the wind is blowing. The backlash to the American age of oligarchy is growing, whether unions position themselves well or not.

Let me give you one concrete policy example. Most Democrats of all stripes support basic union priorities like the PRO Act. But Claire Valdez, the New York DSA candidate soon headed to Congress, has in her platform a plan for the federal government to fund union organizing. That is a policy that would address the biggest obstacle to mass organizing today — a lack of resources — without needing to wait around forever for a big labor-law reform bill that never seems to pass. It is also a policy that has little real momentum in the Democratic Party. But it could, if unions chose to throw their weight behind it and support the members of Congress most likely to back it.

At both the citywide and national levels, major unions are like enormous cargo ships: made up of a lot of different stuff, capable of great force, but very, very slow to turn. They benefit from having visionary leaders who can see past the horizon of today’s polls and into the future of what is possible. America’s crisis of inequality, the wealth of its billionaire class and the collapse of union density have all grown so critical that drastic charge — for better or worse — is inevitable. DSA’s spread inside the Democratic Party is still at its early stages. Unions can help be part of the solution to the party’s reform, or they can get left behind in favor of more savvy progressive interest groups. Make the right choice.