ICYMI: What Good Is a Nurse's Union That Spends Nurses' Money to Make Their Jobs Harder?

Gene Hamilton, Senior Advisor to the Coalition to Protect American Workers, published an op-ed in The Hill yesterday with a simple question union leadership can't answer. Why are unions spending members' dues to block tools that would make members' lives better?

On August 27, National Nurses United staged coordinated protests across eight cities demanding hospitals cancel contracts with Palantir, a company whose systems cut the administrative burden that burns nurses out. The same pattern is playing out at ports, where the International Longshoremen's Association sought an outright ban on automated equipment rather than negotiate retraining, and in California, where SEIU Local 1000 filed grievances to slow AI adoption in state government.

Hamilton's case is that union leadership is prolonging the inevitable at members' expense. Nurses who learn the new systems spend fewer hours on paperwork and more time with patients. Dockworkers who adapt hold a scarce, well-paid skill. The economy is already moving, with solo business formation and self-employment up 27 percent in AI-exposed sectors since early 2024. Rather than helping members meet that change, union leadership is spending their dues on partisan politics. According to the Commonwealth Foundation, the four largest public-sector unions spent more than $700 million in 2021–2022, nearly 96 percent to Democrats.

Hamilton's closing line lands: "Any union that asks them to fear it has forfeited the right to take their money and speak in their name."

Read the full piece here: The Hill