New Foreword for 2025

Trump’s reelection has left workers asking if it’s still possible to organize new unions or if the labor movement will even continue to exist in the U.S. The answer to both questions is an emphatic “yes!” While the terrain workers will be fighting on may change, workers and union organizers should avoid panic. During Trump 2.0, there are surprising reasons for optimism, and workplace organizing will become more important than ever.

This report on what we call “pre-majority unionism” — updated for the second Trump presidency — has lessons in it workers will want to review as they figure out how to adapt to the moment. It also features a new case study on the 40-year history of the pre-majority union at IBM.

Pre-majority unionism means organizing with your co-workers and acting like a union even if you don’t yet have a collective bargaining agreement or official union recognition from your boss. It is a model that many workers will want to adopt in the immediate future since winning official union “recognition” will become harder under the second Trump presidency, especially in the private sector.

What does Trump’s presidency mean for labor? 

Like under all Republican presidencies, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — the body that oversees union organizing in the private sector — will become less worker-friendly. In the least extreme scenario, workers will still be able to run NLRB elections under Trump, though they should expect to depend on even less support from the board than they currently do. In the most extreme scenario, some are warning we could see the end of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This would take us back to the same conditions the U.S. labor movement was initially built under and is a possibility that unions should gear up for. Either way, we can expect cuts to the NLRB’s funding and staffing, making it harder for unions organizing in the private sector to get cases cleared and elections certified. Private-sector union election numbers overall may fall again. 

But non-NLRB, alternative strategies like pre-majority unionism can keep up labor’s momentum and pave the way for a broader union resurgence down the line. They are strategies that public-sector and private-sector unions have used successfully throughout U.S. history, and they are ones we must look to now more than ever.

The original EWOC Pre-Majority Unionism report was published in 2022. We wanted to help equip workers with an organizing strategy appropriate for contexts where there was no clear or immediate path to winning a first contract.

Under this second Trump presidency, workers may want to pay special attention to our case studies, which show how workers have built formal, sustainable, dues-paying organizations outside of the NLRB-framework. In the absence of official employer recognition, strong organizational structures will help pre-majority unions continue to build and sustain power during this increasingly hostile period.

Pre-majority organizing has its particular challenges but also a significant advantage: Any group of workers can start organizing now on their own to win gains at work without running a union election. Yes, there are significant benefits to winning union recognition and bargaining a contract, but in a new period where that will become harder to do and take longer to accomplish, pre-majority organizing provides a path for how to start organizing immediately. 

While pre-majority unions are often started by the workers themselves, unions can also initiate pre-majority campaigns, especially in contexts where workers lack the right to collective bargaining (like many gig workers or public sector workers in red and some purple states) as well as at larger employers where it will likely be a marathon, not a sprint, to get to a company-wide contract. Pre-majority unions can also be a great way to start building workplace power, to win significant gains, to train new worker leaders, and to prepare for a hopefully better environment for union elections in the future. 

The most important thing is that millions of workers want a union and can start organizing now. And they don’t have to figure this out on their own: anyone can contact EWOC anytime for training and assistance.

A fighting, powerful labor movement is our best bet to defeat Trumpism and the billionaires. As we show in the following pages, pre-majority unionism is an important tool for reaching this goal.