Executive Summary
The political Right is in the midst of a revolution on labor and workforce issues. Republican members of Congress and the President’s Cabinet have broken longstanding taboos on engagement with union leaders. Conservative commentators speak of boosting union membership and increasing labor’s leverage against management. By engaging labor, conservatives are attempting to answer the concerns of workers displaced by global trade, mounting distrust of corporations, and a surge in populism in the Republican Party. This marks a departure from the GOP’s decades-long status quo of hostility to unions and embrace of workers’ individual autonomy.
This shift is still underway, and several fissures within the movement make the landscape uncertain. How fast is political change occurring, and is a reversal foreseeable? How will unions adapt? And where can industry exert influence? As the Right broadly rethinks issues of economics, trade, and national development, these questions remain highly contentious. Baron launched this first-of-its-kind study to explore differences between conservative approaches to labor and workforce issues, highlight points of alignment, and map the trajectory of the movement.
To capture the current state of the debate, during the summer of 2025, Baron conducted over 30 interviews with conservative thought leaders, labor law experts, union leaders, economists, Administration officials, and congressional staff, mostly on background or off the record. This report is intended to inform the ongoing debate while representing the variety of viewpoints accurately and impartially. Baron advises the International Franchise Association; the firm’s expertise on labor issues has also, in part, been shaped by advising other clients with large workforces.
In the near term, policy makers from Congress to the White House are unlikely to address labor issues in a manner dramatically different from previous Republican Administrations. However, the medium-term policy outlook has already changed significantly, and the rifts within conservatism should be major considerations in projecting the direction of policy in the long term. From labor advocates to industry leaders, decision makers will need to monitor who on the Right is likely to be a determined adversary and who a possible ally in the years ahead.
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