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UNION LEADERS’ EXIT FROM DNC EXPOSES ‘MIND-BOGGLING’ TENSIONS
INSIDE DEMOCRATIC PARTY  
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Steven Greenhouse
June 25, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Union leaders’ exit from DNC exposes ‘mind-boggling’ tensions
inside Democratic party Lee Saunders and Randi Weingarten say party
not standing up for working people amid ‘existential battle’ under
Trump _

Randi Weingarten has been been a member of the DNC for 23 years., J.
Scott Applewhite/AP

 

As the Democratic party fights to rebuild from a devastating election
defeat, the abrupt exit of the presidents of two of the nation’s
largest labor unions from its top leadership board has exposed
simmering tensions over the party’s direction.

Randi Weingarten and Lee Saunders quit the Democratic National
Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to “open the gates” and
win back the support of working-class voters. Ken Martin, the new DNC
chair, and his allies told the Guardian that the party was focused on
doing exactly that.

Weingarten, president of the 1.8-million-member American Federation of
Teachers, resigned after Martin did not renominate her to serve on the
DNC’s important rules committee. In her resignation letter,
Weingarten wrote that education, healthcare and public service workers
were in “an existential battle” due to Donald Trump’s attacks
and that she did not “want to be the one who keeps questioning why
we are not enlarging our tent”.

Saunders, the long-time president of the 1.3-million-member American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, also issued a
critical statement. “These are new times. They deserve new
strategies,” he said. “We must evolve to meet the urgency of the
moment. This is not a time to close ranks or turn inward … It is our
responsibility to open the gates welcome others.”

[a man speaks into a microphone in front of a crowd of people]

Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County
and Municipal Employees, earlier this month. Photograph: Bryan
Dozier/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

Several DNC officials asserted that the two departures were a
“tempest in a teapot”, insisting that Martin is working to have
the DNC welcome more people and battle against Trump. Weingarten and
Saunders evidently felt sore that their candidate for DNC chair, Ben
Wikler, the head of Wisconsin’s Democratic party, lost to Martin,
the officials suggested.

Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the main US
labor federation, said the resignations were an inarguable blow to the
DNC.

“When something like this becomes public, there’s clearly a
spotlight on it,” he said. “Giving the longstanding leadership
role that Randi and Lee have played in the Democratic party, and at a
time when the party is trying to desperately improve its image with
working-class voters and remake itself in a lot of ways, this is
really unacceptable.”

In an interview, Weingarten said she wished the DNC was conducting an
all-out nationwide mobilization to defeat the Trump/GOP budget bill,
which would throw an estimated 11 million Americans off health
insurance, cut food stamps to millions of families and cause the
federal debt to soar by over $3tn.

DNC chair Martin told the Guardian that, under his leadership, the DNC
was already doing what Weingarten and Saunders were calling for.
“I’ve always called myself a pro-labor progressive,” Martin
said, noting that he had been a union member and labor organizer.
“My family grew up on programs that would be cut if Trump’s tax
scam passes. Winning back the working class and stopping Trump from
harming families is exactly where our focus is.”

Martin added that in his nearly five months as DNC chair, the
committee has held 130 town halls and launched an “aggressive war
room” to take on Trump. “My first action as DNC chair was pledging
to have strong labor voices at the table,” Martin said. “Our job
is to win in 2025, 2026 and beyond.”

But their resignation statements signal that Weingarten and Saunders
have a very different view from Martin of what the DNC is doing on his
watch. Several DNC officials said the pair might not be up to date
with the DNC’s activities across the 50 states.

Weingarten told the Guardian that Martin and the DNC are not showing
nearly enough urgency in opposing the Trump/GOP budget bill. “The
number one issue in the next two weeks is: how do we help fight the
GOP budget bill that faces almost two-to-one public opposition,” she
said, adding that the DNC should be going all out to help House and
Senate Democrats
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“We can be the voice and be out there with stories about how the
budget bill will hurt, and the DNC is a perfect place for doing
that,” Weingarten said. “You got to win hearts and minds now, not
in October 2026. That’s the kind of thing that we’ve been looking
for since January. We have to be a party that wins on the ground.”

Artie Blanco, a union activist and DNC vice-chair, said that under
Martin, the DNC had been fighting hard against the budget bill.

“There are over 16,000 Democratic volunteers making phone calls
across the country in targeted congressional districts about the GOP
budget, and how it will be devastating to working people,” Blanco
said.

Weingarten voiced dismay about not being renominated for the rules
committee. “It was definitely a sign that my input was not sought
any more and appreciated,” she said, stressing that the AFT “will
continue to be a leader in electing pro-public education, pro-working
family candidates” and planned to be “especially engaged” in the
2025-26 elections.

Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic
Committees, said that Weingarten’s and Saunders’s “claims that
Ken and the DNC are not standing up for working people and not
standing on the side of unions and union members is laughable”.

“Ken has been on the front line to bring unions back to our
party,” added Kleeb, who is also chair of the Nebraska Democratic
party. “He has appointed more union leaders than any other chair”
– and put unions at the forefront while chair of the Minnesota
Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, before he assumed the DNC’s helm, she
said.

Stuart Appelbaum, the DNC’s labor chair, and president of the
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, took issue with the
statements Weingarten and Saunders made about Martin.

“I am thrilled that Ken Martin is prioritizing the importance of
having labor at the table and has ensured that there is strong labor
representation in every part of the DNC,” Appelbaum said. He added
that Martin “understands that working people are the backbone of the
party”.

Michael Podhorzer, a political strategist and former AFL-CIO political
director, said the Democratic party has for decades not focused enough
on working-class voters. He said Democrats would have a tough battle
winning back blue-collar voters. “The experience of many American
working people is they feel left off the radar,” Podhorzer said.

Democrats, Podhorzer noted, have suffered the greatest loss of support
in communities that were “gutted” after the 2008-09 recession;
from the signing of Nafta, a trade deal with Canada and Mexico; and
from normalized trade relations with China. Nafta and normalized trade
with China were ratified under President Clinton, a Democrat.

Arlie Russell Hochschild, a sociologist who has studied Trump’s
success in wooing working-class voters, said the decline of US labor
unions over the past 50 years has necessarily meant that unions have
less sway in the Democratic party.

Rosenthal, the former AFL-CIO official and also a former DNC deputy
political director, called on the DNC and Democrats to work far more
closely with unions.

“Among working-class voters, support for unions is through the roof,
and the Democratic party and the Republican party have no credibility
with working-class voters,” he said. “They don’t trust the
parties, but they trust the labor movement. It’s incumbent on the
party to build bridges and put the labor movement front and center in
everything it does.”

“From that standpoint,” he continued, the tension that led to
Weingarten and Sauders quitting “is mind-boggling”. Several labor
leaders said Martin should have done more to keep prominent and
powerful union leaders like Weingarten and Saunders satisfied and on
the DNC, even if they backed one of his opponents for DNC chair.

Responding to Weingarten and Saunders’ concerns, Martin said: “The
DNC and our partners are leading the fight against Trump’s budget
bill, investing unprecedented dollars into states so Democrats can win
elections from the ground up, and reaching out to voters in
working-class districts.”

Martin told the Guardian that he’s trying hard to build bridges with
the broader labor movement, and increase its role in the DNC and in
the Democrats’ efforts. “Winning back the working class and
stopping Trump’s budget bill isn’t a political goal, it’s
personal,” he said. “Labor runs through my family’s veins.”

_Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and
the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues _

* Democratic National Committee
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* labor leaders
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* Resignation
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