Funded Research

Union locals are the closest union organization to rank-and-file union members. An important feature of locals is that members can influence their leaders by participating in meetings, voting for different leaders, and in extreme circumstances, leaving. This means there is some potential for accountability between members and union local officers. Union officers must respond to the preferences of union members to win re-election. My main prediction is that this institutional design should lead union local officers to avoid partisan political activity that does not directly benefit their members. This is for several reasons. First, union members particularly value their union for the material benefits they provide (Hertel-Fernandez and Porter 2021) and many Americans dislike when labor unions engage in politics (Hertel-Fernandez et al. 2022). Second, union members are increasingly split between both parties which leads to an additional source of constraint on union officers’ political activity. Third, union officers may have political preferences that are out-of-step relative to their members. Union local officers should only engage in political activity when it will directly benefit their members (e.g., electing school board members, lobbying on specific construction projects, etc.). This project will survey union local officers to better understand whether these considerations constrain their political activity.