CWA's Own Members Are Sending a Message. Leadership Just Isn't Listening.

On April 12th, CWA leadership gathered in New York City to launch Union NOW!, a nonprofit with a stated mission of supporting workers fighting for fair contracts. They were surrounded by exactly who you'd expect: Senator Bernie Sanders, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, and a roster of left-wing activists and political figures.

What they probably didn't expect was the reaction from their own members.

Within hours of CWA posting about the event on Facebook, the comments section told a very different story than the one being celebrated on stage. It's one that union leadership should be paying close attention to.

"Figures. Unions Aligning With Socialists."

That was the top comment on CWA's post. 

It wasn't alone. Scroll through the thread, and you find worker after worker — people who have paid dues for years, decades in some cases — expressing frustration, embarrassment, and outright disgust at where their union has chosen to plant its flag.

"No we don't align with Bernie Sanders, or any of these liberals. We stand for the AT&T people," wrote one member.

"Glad my 26 [years of] membership with CWA ends in July. Ashamed of the leadership."

"Amazing how CWA celebrates Mamdani, yet CWA District 1 members just got the worst contract of their careers."

"Clueless sellouts."

"I am going to write my letter. I am out."

And perhaps the most pointed: "This is why I didn't like my union. 27 years of dues and partial bonuses going to the Democrats. They backed me up once and I appreciate it, but I should've had a choice where my dues went."

The Irony of Union NOW!

The contradiction is a striking one.

An organization built specifically to fight for fair contracts chose to launch itself at a rally headlined by two self-described democratic socialists. Zohran Mamdani is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America who used his 100-day address as New York City mayor to openly embrace that ideology. Bernie Sanders has spent four decades doing the same in the United States Senate. These are not background associations or passing affiliations. They are the defining political identities of both men, stated plainly and repeatedly in their own words.

CWA chose them as the public face of a campaign to fight for fair contracts.

Think about what that choice communicates to a union member in Ohio, Iowa, or North Carolina — someone who voted Republican in 2024, who rejects socialist economic policy, who simply wants better pay and a fair shake at work. The message from CWA leadership is clear, even if unspoken: your politics don't belong here. That is not solidarity. That is a loyalty test.

The Gap Between Leadership and the Workers Paying the Bills

Union members voted Republican in 2024 in numbers not seen in decades. Not because they stopped believing in worker representation, but because leadership stopped representing them.

According to national exit polls compiled by the Roper Center at Cornell University, the Democratic margin among union households has collapsed over three decades:

The trend line is not subtle. As the Democratic Party has moved left, centering its messaging on cultural issues increasingly distant from the kitchen table, and allowing union leadership to embed itself deeper in progressive politics, it has steadily bled the union vote it once took for granted. The margin that used to be 30 points is now 8. That is not a blip. It is a verdict.

According to CNN's post-election analysis, Trump made his largest gains specifically among non-college union members — the workers union leadership claims to serve most.

And the comments on CWA's own Facebook post tell you exactly why.

These are workers who have paid dues for years, decades in some cases, with no say in where that money goes. Under Biden-era NLRB rules, union membership can be imposed on an entire workplace through a Cemex bargaining order, certified without a secret-ballot election. Blocking charges can freeze workers in place for months or years if they try to leave. The system, as union leadership has pushed to design it, makes it easy to get in and very hard to get out. Meanwhile, the dues those workers pay flow overwhelmingly into Democratic campaigns and progressive causes — not because members voted on it, but because leadership decided it.

"27 years of dues and partial bonuses going to the Democrats. They backed me up once and I appreciate it, but I should've had a choice where my dues went."

Twenty-seven years. One assist. No vote on any of it. That is not an outlier. It is the through-line.

The rank-and-file is not following its leadership to the left. It is walking the other way. Labor policy should be centered on the worker: the right to a secret-ballot election, the right to hear both sides before making a decision, and the right to a say in how their dues are spent — not on entrenching institutions that have substituted progressive advocacy for actual representation. Workers see the difference. And the data shows they have been saying so at the ballot box for nearly a decade.

The Workers Are Right. The Leadership Is Wrong.

What happened at the Union NOW! rally was exposure. CWA's leadership did not hide their priorities. They put them on a stage in midtown Manhattan, lit them up, and posted them to Facebook. Their own members did the rest.

The rank-and-file workers leaving those comments are not anti-union. They are pro-worker, which is precisely why they are angry. They believe in representation that delivers real results: better wages, safer workplaces, fair contracts won at the bargaining table. What they do not believe in is a leadership class that funnels their dues into a political movement they never signed up for, standing alongside politicians they never endorsed, in pursuit of goals that have nothing to do with the contract sitting on the table.

The secret ballot. The right to hear both sides. A fair process for workers who want to leave as much as for those who want to organize. These are not partisan positions. They are the basic conditions of a labor system that works for workers rather than one that works workers over.

When union member after union member says I should have had a choice — on the ballot, on their dues, on who speaks for them — they are right. Restoring that choice is what pro-worker reform looks like. And it is long overdue.