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DEMOCRATS CAVED IN THE SHUTDOWN FIGHT. UNIONS LET THEM.  
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Eric Blanc
November 10, 2025
Jacobin
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_ The government shutdown was a test showing where progressive forces
are strong and where they’re weak. The results are in after last
night’s Democratic capitulation to the GOP: most top union leaders
are failing to meet the moment. _

Countless Americans are rightfully incensed not only at the senators
who voted to end the shutdown on Republicans’ terms but also at
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who let this capitulation
happen., Nathan Posner / Anadolu via Getty Images

 

 

In a spectacular act of cowardice and idiocy last night, seven
Democratic Party senators and one independent voted to end the
shutdown on Republicans’ terms, squandering their momentum and
leverage. Bernie Sanders laid out
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consequences of this capitulation:

It raises health care premiums for over twenty million Americans by
doubling, in some cases, tripling or quadrupling, and it paves the way
for fifteen million people to be thrown off of Medicaid and the
Affordable Care Act. Studies show that some 50,000 Americans will die
every year unnecessarily — and all that was done to give a trillion
dollars in tax breaks to the 1 percent.

Countless Americans today are rightfully incensed not only at the
senators who caved but also at Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer,
who let
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this capitulation happen.

But there’s one more group that deserves our anger today: top union
leaders.

 

 
The major domino to set off last night’s capitulation was the
decision by the American Federation of Government Employees’ (AFGE)
national leadership on October 27 to call
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on Democrats to end the shutdown on Donald Trump’s terms — without
any guarantees for tens of millions of Americans’ health care
coverage.

 

The main rationale provided by AFGE president Everett Kelley was that
his members were suffering economically from the shutdown. There’s
no doubt that this hurt is very real, and I do not doubt the sincerity
of Kelley’s commitment to his membership. But AFGE’s leadership
could have decided to pressure Republicans rather than Democrats to
end the shutdown. That was a _political_ choice.

Rank-and-file AFGE members this morning released an open letter
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on their national leadership to oppose the deal. As one rank-and-file
AFGE member wrote to me last night, “Many of us are furious at AFGE
leadership. . . . Even if AFGE leaders thought the shutdown had become
too costly, they could’ve put the blame squarely on the Republicans
who can reopen the gov at any time by changing the senate rules.”
And far from surrendering after putting up a hard fight, AFGE from day
one of this shutdown has refused to provide any serious red lines for
the Republicans and has refused to launch any real pressure campaigns
against them.

AFGE leaders aren’t the only part of organized labor that paved the
way for this debacle. Both Democratic senators caved in Nevada, a
state where the primarily immigrant and periodically militant Culinary
Union, a UNITE HERE affiliate, is the most powerful player in
Democratic politics. It’s hard to imagine that Nevada’s senators
would have made such a consequential decision without the tacit or
explicit green light of Culinary leaders — indeed, there’s no
mention of the shutdown fight in any of the union’s recent press
releases (see below).

 

 
The Culinary leadership was likely worried that continued air traffic
delays would hurt their members by dampening tourism in Vegas, but
this doesn’t justify refusing to put up a cross-union fight to force
the Republicans to cave. Culinary workers have famously great health
care; it’s sad that their union leaders still appear reluctant to
fight for the same rights for every American. (In the 2020
presidential election, Culinary leaders similarly opposed
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Sanders and his demand for Medicare for All.)
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of the reason Democratic politicians don’t fight is that most union
leaders don’t fight either — at least not in a way that meets the
urgency of this authoritarian and oligarchic moment. AFGE, the
Culinary union, and the rest of organized labor could have built a
massive solidarity fund to support needy federal workers and other
employees hurt by the shutdown. They could have held regular press
conferences, rallies, and actions in front of the offices of both
Republicans and Democrats who refused to commit to preserving
Americans’ health care. And they could have pushed for nonviolent
direct actions to pressure Trump to stop starving Americans by
continuing to block Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
benefits.

Instead, we saw pressure on Democrats to cave — and, unsurprisingly,
Democratic capitulators like Tim Kaine of Virginia last night
explained
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their decision primarily as a way to support federal workers.

It would be too generous to say AFGE and the Culinary leaders’
decisions reflect a prioritization of the interests of their members
over the interests of the broader American working class. That would
be bad enough. What makes their actions doubly tragic is that their
_own_ members will also be hurt by this capitulation, since it throws
away the real possibility to deliver a decisive defeat against a Trump
administration that remains dead set on terrorizing federal workers
and immigrants across the country.

Republicans were rightfully getting blamed by Americans for the
shutdown. Finally we had real leverage over this authoritarian
administration. After last Tuesday’s Democratic electoral sweep
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after Trump’s politically suicidal push to cut off SNAP benefits
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escalating air traffic delays and health care premium hikes looming,
holding out longer would likely have forced the Republicans to blink,
most likely by nuking the filibuster — a move, in itself, that would
have been a boon for democracy.

But due to the weakness of Democratic and union leaders, the headline
is now “Democrats Cave Because They are Cowards,” rather than
“Republicans Cave Because They Want Your Health Care Costs to Go
Up.” This puts Trump in a significantly better position to continue
his war against federal employees, immigrants, and American democracy.

A share of responsibility for this falls on the labor movement as a
whole. Most unions said the right thing in their press releases about
the shutdown, but where was the big public fight to stop Democrats
from caving? Last night wasn’t a surprise. For weeks now everybody
has known that moderate Democrats were trying to broker a capitulatory
“deal” with Republicans. It wouldn’t have been hard for the
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
(AFL-CIO) and big progressive unions to have called on every senator
to commit to hard red lines on health care — and to start protesting
daily against those who refused to commit. In fights like these, good
press releases are far from enough.

 

 
This shutdown fight was a “structure test
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showing where we’re strong and where we’re weak. The results are
in: most top union leaders are failing to meet the moment. Despite a
widespread desire from below to fight, institutional inertia and
risk-aversion up top remain the norm. As Sanders noted
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last Tuesday’s “election showed is that the American people want
us to stand up to Trumpism, to his war against working-class people,
to his authoritarianism — that is what the American people want us
to do. But tonight that is not what happened.”

The struggle is far from over. Trump can be defeated and health care
defended. Trump’s popularity is plummeting, Republicans were dealt a
severe electoral blow last week, and there is still time for the
movement against them to course correct by putting up a real fight
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against authoritarian rule by supporting walkouts against Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invasions and by launching ambitious
campaigns to pressure the regime’s pillars of support —
businesses, media outlets, school administrations, and the rest — to
break from Trump.

We still have the momentum. But what last night’s debacle made clear
is that we can’t wait for our side’s top “leaders” to start
leading. Winning a better country and democracy requires a new
leadership in the Democratic Party _and _in organized labor. Anything
short of that is a recipe for continued disaster.

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Copublished with _Labor Notes_.

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Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers
University. He blogs at the Substack Labor Politics and is the author
of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing
Labor and Winning Big.

* Government Shutdown; Unions; Democratic Party; Health Care;
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