This year the number of politicians and corporations attacking labor unions is on the rise. Project 2025, the far-right blueprint developed for the second Trump administration, outlines ways for states to ban public employee labor unions. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and fellow tech billionaire Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon are spearheading the corporate-led effort to disband the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the independent federal agency responsible for regulating private sector employers. President Trump has dismantled the federal mediation service and outlawed collective bargaining for more than one million government employees.
On top of all this, well-funded anti-labor organizations — many of which have been operating for half a century or more — continue to focus on states and municipalities in order to further decimate labor unions and workers’ rights.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has identified the top six organizations working at the state and local levels to dismantle labor regulations and the rights to organize and collectively bargain. Since many of these organizations share the same funding sources, funding information has been provided for some, but not all, organizations. Many of these organizations are members of the State Policy Network (SPN), a right-wing network that has spearheaded an extensive operation to “defund and defang” unions since 2016 in order to “deal a major blow to the left’s ability to control government at the state and national levels.”
1. American Legislative Exchange Council
For over 50 years, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate-funded bill mill, has developed and disseminated model bills that curtail labor rights, making it harder — if not impossible — for workers to organize, and harder for local governments to support decent-paying jobs, while making it easier for big business to exploit these workers. ALEC has paid particular attention to public sector unions by peddling model bills that prohibit paycheck deductions for dues, mandate high membership thresholds, and introduce automatic decertification, among other anti-labor measures. ALEC’s most notorious contribution to the dire legal environment for private sector unions is its promulgation of anti-union “right to work” bills, which are now in effect in 26 states. Much of the language in these right to work laws was lifted verbatim from ALEC models.
This year is no different, with ALEC’s plan for 2025 placing priority on defunding public sector unions, preempting local labor laws, eliminating occupational regulations, and entrenching precarity for workers by expanding the ranks of independent contractors.
Earlier this year, two ALEC members in Utah introduced a bill that successfully banned collective bargaining by public sector workers in the state. The ban is similar to former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s notorious Act 10, passed in 2011, which effectively banned public sector collective bargaining in the state. Key provisions of the law were later incorporated into ALEC model bills, according to documents obtained by whistle-blower groups.
The anti-labor model bills ALEC is pushing this year include the “Union Recertification Act,” which makes it harder for public sector workers to keep their unions; the “Fair and Accountable Public Sector Authority Act,” which outlaws public sector collective bargaining; and the “Taxpayer Dollars Protect Workers Act,” which punishes businesses that sign neutrality agreements with unions by barring them from receiving state economic development incentives.
Model bills like those developed and promulgated by ALEC serve a dual purpose: they both advance a cookie-cutter, pro-corporate agenda at the state level and create avenues for impact litigation — the practice of strategically implementing state laws in order to generate court cases that challenge and often lead to changes in federal regulations and protections. A recent study found that model bills produced by ALEC have a staggeringly high probability of ending up before the U.S. Supreme Court: 17% as opposed to an average of 1% of other cases.
Although ALEC refuses to disclose its membership lists, CMD maintains a regularly updated database of known ALEC members in all 50 states.
Almost all of ALEC’s funding comes from its corporate members and right-wing donors. In 2017, nearly 90% of ALEC’s funding came from those two sources, meaning that annual dues from lawmakers account for only a marginal fraction of its funding. ALEC’s biggest right-wing donors include the Bradley Foundation, the Kochs, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Scaife Foundations, and DonorsTrust.
2. Freedom Foundation
The Freedom Foundation, a libertarian organization based in Washington state, is one of the country’s most aggressive anti-union outfits. It claims to battle “the entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas.” Its strategies for dismantling unions are legion, including running “opt-out” campaigns that pressure union members to stop paying union dues; developing and promoting anti-worker bills in state legislatures; financing and promoting “alternative” employee organizations to compete with and drain resources from extant labor unions; training teachers to bust their own unions; and, among others, filing lawsuits against unions for alleged anti-semitism, a well-worn tactic used by the anti-union lobby.
Although the Freedom Foundation has made concerted efforts to dismantle both public and private sector unions, in recent years it has focused on teachers’ unions. Its CEO Aaron Withe celebrated Trump’s promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, erroneously claiming that the department had only been founded “as a political favor to the National Education Association,” the county’s largest teachers’ union.
This year, the Freedom Foundation launched a new anti-union organization called the Teacher Freedom Alliance (TFA), which Withe describes as “an alternative for pro-America educators who seek to restore traditional values in the classroom and provide students with the high-quality education they deserve — free from political influence and union control.” It has also backed an Arkansas bill that would ban union leaders from holding meetings with new members.
The Freedom Foundation’s push to dismantle unions is part of a larger campaign fueled by right-wing donors to defund the Democratic Party. In 2016 its Oregon coordinator said in a speech that the organization’s primary goal was “to defund the political left.” Its largest known donors are the Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Searle Freedom Trust.
3. Foundation for Government Accountability
The Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) and its advocacy arm, Opportunity Solutions Project (OSP), have their fingers in many pots, from lobbying for restrictive voting laws to opposing the use of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria in making investments. However, FGA and OSP have also promoted rolling back regulations on child labor and restricting access to food stamps. FGA has led the “national push for state legislation to weaken child labor laws and increase economic desperation of poor children and families,” according to the Economic Policy Institute. The nonpartisan think tank has provided state lawmakers with model legislation for relaxing child labor laws.
In state houses across the country, FGA advocates for legislation that preempts local labor regulations, such as higher minimum wages; adds burdensome administrative requirements to unions, such as annual recertification and eliminating automatic dues deductions; and eliminates union release time, which allows members to continue to earn wages while working on their collective bargaining agreements and other union matters.
4. Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a right-wing network founded and funded by the petrochemical billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. In addition to pushing anti-worker, anti-union legislation, AFP advocates for policies that hurt working Americans, including opposing Medicaid expansion, promoting tax plans that disproportionately hurt the poor, gutting public education, and protecting dirty fossil fuel industries, which tend to pollute and harm poor communities more than others.
This year the organization’s advocacy arm, Americans for Prosperity Action, testified in favor of the Utah bill outlawing public sector collective bargaining in the state.
Along with ALEC, AFP has played a significant role in passing right to work laws, pouring millions of dollars into defending then-Governor Walker after public outcry over Act 10 triggered a recall election in 2012. AFP has lobbied significantly against the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would nullify state right to work laws.
Koch-controlled groups have pumped more than $500 million into AFP over the past decade and accounted for more than 70% ($130 million) of AFP’s revenues in 2023.
5. Center for Independent Employees
The Center for Independent Employees (CIE) is a South Carolina-based legal defense organization that describes itself as providing “free legal representation and aid to independent employees who are opposed to union oppression in their workplaces.” CIE’s “Brushfires of Freedom” campaign targets local National Education Association (NEA) chapters in the plains — Kansas and Nevada — for decertification. CIE claims to have “provided the legal counsel to remove the NEA from 25 Kansas school districts” and to have worked to decertify NEA locals in Kansas since 2009.
Although CIE appears to be focused on the Great Plains states, this year it worked to decertify a Teamsters local of private funeral home workers in New York City and a union at a metal supplier in Florida, and last year helped airline attendants decertify their union at Avelo Airlines, the small company that just struck a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to help deport immigrants. CIE also helped with the passage of Florida’s anti-union legislation (SB 256) in 2023, claiming to have worked to support “efforts to craft SB 256” since 2019.
Since 2015, CIE’s funding has grown exponentially. The National Christian Charitable Foundation (NCCF), a right-wing organization, provides the bulk of its funding: nearly two thirds of CIE’s total revenue in 2023 came from NCCF.
6. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation worked with the Liberty Justice Center to represent Mark Janus in the eponymous 2018 Supreme Court case that resulted in the decimation of public sector unionization rights. The group, based in Virginia, was founded in 1968 and works to “eliminate coercive union power and compulsory unionism.”
Illustrative of National Right to Work’s long tenure in the anti-union space is the fact that it also represented the plaintiff in the 1977 case that Janus overturned, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The group runs two related organizations: the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that promotes anti-union research, and the National Right to Work Committee, a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization that lobbies for anti-union policies.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has long opposed fundamental labor protections, including project labor agreements, which it claims are used by politicians and government officials to “reward the union officials that fund their political campaigns and keep them in power.”
Since Janus, the organization has focused its resources on providing legal representation to anti-union workers, challenging unions’ rights to exclusive representation in the public sector, and advocating for state-level legislation that prohibits automatic payroll deductions for union dues and increases the threshold for union recertification elections.
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