Laying the Groundwork for a Class Alignment Labor Strategy, part 4: What should be done
By Daniel C, Louisville DSA; Lyra S, Chicago DSA; Sumter A, Atlanta DSA
October 22nd, 2025
The following is the final part of a four-part series on the Class Alignment strategy. You can read the first part here, the second part here, and the third part here. This is not Groundwork’s official stance as of now, but it will be put forward at the caucus convening in early 2026 for a membership vote. Previously, the authors laid out DSA’s four vectors of influence in the labor movement and three facts regarding the current political conjuncture. In this part, the authors propose four modifications to DSA’s labor institutions as well as a five-point plan for immediate action. - Ed.
With these four points of leverage and three conjunctural realities in mind, the authors have developed a series of priorities for DSA’s labor work. These priorities are designed to achieve a combination of short-term and long-term goals. The short-term goals are to align unions in which DSA members already have a strong presence, to arrest the nationwide decline in union membership, and to build municipal left-labor alliances capable of passing pro-labor legislation.
The first long-term goal is for the union movement to reach “escape velocity” and for a national left-labor bloc to effect a wave of unionization similar to that of the 1930s or 1960s, enabling 21st-century unionism to become a social movement with a hegemonic valence and significance far beyond DSA’s orbit. DSA is to shepherd this social movement towards a class-struggle orientation, one that breaks the back of the Taft-Hartley consensus and articulates demands surrounding not just wages and security, but prices, hiring, and control of the shop floor, with the eventual goal of carrying out the prerogative first laid out by the United Farm Equipment workers in the 1930s, that "management has no right to exist.”
The second, more long-term goal is to create a social and legal environment where allied democratic, militant, and left-wing unions can officially affiliate with DSA, as the militant shop-floor element of a socialist party. In this configuration, union leadership would come from the rank and file and be active DSA cadre, with the goal of open strategic coordination between union leadership and local chapters, much like our approach with SIOs. These unions would have formal agreements to back socialist campaigns and priorities, and, once we have amassed sufficient leverage, conduct explicitly political strikes in favor of mass redistribution and economic democratization.
The Class Alignment Strategy recommends four modifications to DSA’s labor institutions in order to leverage our members as workers, both unionized and non-unionized.
First, the authors call for chapter labor committees to map their membership and sort them into labor circles, which are groups of DSA members organized by their employment sector. These labor circles are to encourage unionized DSA members and DSA union staffers to join their union’s DSA section (discussed later), non-unionized DSA members to organize their workplaces and join nationwide rank-and-file networks (discussed later), develop strategies to recruit workers in their sector into DSA, recommend chapter orientations towards their respective sectors and employers, as well as connect active organizers with groups like EWOC and Workers Organizing Workers.
Second, the authors call for the creation of new nationwide rank-and-file networks, organized on an industry-by-industry or target-by-target basis and comprised of DSA members actively organizing in workplaces, modeled on the recently created nationwide Amazon salt network. These rank-and-file networks will share information, determine points of leverage, and provide mutual support to ongoing unionization campaigns. These networks will discuss among themselves the most effective methods for organizing their respective industries.
Third, the authors call for unionized DSA members and DSA staffers to create “sections” within their unions. These sections are to organize within their unions to make them more militant, democratic, and left-wing. To decide which axis to prioritize at any given moment, sections will operate with a wide degree of organizational autonomy, although they will be required to maintain internal democracy based on the principle of “one member, one vote.” These sections will be given latitude to decide their orientation towards their local and international unions, and choose between supporting existing leadership in the case of an aligned union, working within a broader reform caucus, or creating an explicitly socialist caucus. Sections will be harmonized with chapter and national priorities through the creation of Socialists in Labor (SiL) committees, tasked with liaising with the sections to determine how they can support wider DSA priorities and how DSA can support them.
Fourth, the authors call for greater coordination between both chapter-level and national-level electoral and labor bodies. DSA sections should push their unions to endorse and support DSA candidates, while DSA left-labor candidates should use the bully pulpit to support unionization drives, train DSA members to be organizers, and pass pro-labor legislation. Coordination between SiL and SiO committees, as well as between labor and electoral committees, is vital to ensure that our labor and electoral priorities do not conflict. In particular, we propose a much greater degree of coordination between NLC and NEC, from leadership down to the rank-and-file. In creating an explicitly political labor strategy predicated on our ability to wield state power, it’s crucial that our best electoral and labor organizers are able to jointly discuss tactics, share best practices, keep each other up to date, and – if necessary – run truly joint external-facing campaigns.
Utilizing these new institutions and organizational forms, the authors recommend the following five-point immediate course of action:
First, the authors call for DSA Sections to organize within their unions to effectuate investment in new organizing, especially through encouraging their unions to fund and affiliate with EWOC. The great burst of unionization launched by the CIO in the 1930s was accomplished through a variety of factors, one of the most important of which was the United Mine Workers’ decision to invest tens of millions of dollars into new organizing. We believe that an even larger investment by existing unions will be necessary to set off a firestorm of new organizing. Already-aligned unions such as UNITE-HERE, UTLA, and CTU should be the first unions brought on board for this project.
Second, the authors call for prioritizing the alignment of large, multiracial public sector unions such as SEIU and AFSCME. These unions and their vast resources will provide not just inroads into demographics historically suspicious of DSA, but their alignment will also deprive the Democratic establishment of key allies. These public sector unions are to be considered strategic priorities for the class alignment strategy.
Third, the authors call for the creation of municipal left-labor blocs. These close alliances between DSA and aligned class struggle unions should co-endorse candidates, collaborate on campaigns, and jointly push for transformative non-reformist reforms. Closely aligned unions should be considered our most vital partners, and our local leadership should coordinate directly with their leadership.
Fourth, the authors call for DSA union sections to politicize their unions. Regardless of a DSA section’s decision as to whether or not to support existing leadership, a reform caucus, or form a socialist caucus, they should pressure their unions to fight back against right-wing attacks on immigrants and multiracial democracy, and endorse an arms embargo on Israel. These efforts should be coordinated with national and local DSA campaigns.
Fifth, the authors call for a DSA-wide investment in our National Labor Commission and its structures. To implement a strategy as ambitious as the Class Alignment Strategy, national labor bodies will require significantly more investment, both in volunteer and staff hours. We intend to put our words into action. If this strategy is adopted by Groundwork, we plan to put our time where our mouths are and invest in the NLC, as well as call for the hiring of labor staffers tasked with supercharging the efforts of DSA sections to align their unions.
In Summation:
The first theoretical proposition of the Class Alignment Strategy is that we utilize all of the previously listed points of leverage, to make unions more left, militant, and democratic with each leverage point being prioritized in proportion to the balance of forces in the union being considered, the immediate objectives of the chapter engaging in labor work, and the axis we are attempting to move.
The second theoretical proposition is that when prioritizing points of leverage, we factor in the through-lines that define the current conjuncture, namely: the rise of fascism, the left’s isolation from labor, and the overall decline of the labor movement. The methods we will use to carry out this alignment are Labor Circles, nationwide rank-and-file networks, and DSA union sections.
The immediate goals of the Class Alignment Strategy are to encourage already-aligned unions to contribute to EWOC, build out municipal left-labor blocs, align multiracial public sector unions such as SEIU and AFSCME, bring our unions into the fight against fascism and Zionism, and build the NLC into a body capable of coordinating this nationwide strategy.
The long-term goals of this Class Alignment Strategy are to create a militant, democratic left-wing union movement aligned with DSA and working alongside it to break the bosses’ power in the workplace, dismantle the US empire, and carry out mass redistribution towards the end goal of a fundamental social transformation.
This strategy of Class Alignment is not a purely theoretical proposition. It is already in practice in our organization’s second biggest chapter, Los Angeles. DSA Los Angeles has its leadership meetings in the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) skyscraper in Koreatown. One of its most recognizable SIOs is a long-term organizer with UNITE-HERE Local 11, the hotel workers’ union. DSA, UTLA, and UNITE-HERE often co-endorse the same set of candidates for office, and the members of each organization work on each other’s campaigns. The collaboration between these unions and DSA spans the level of DSA cadre taking up rank-and-file positions within the unions to coordination between leadership towards the shared goal of a “Los Angeles for the Many.” Los Angeles’s DSA-UNITE-HERE-UTLA alliance is a real-world example of a left-labor bloc rooted in the multiracial working class, a bloc that we will need to reconstitute across the country if we are going to unite labor and the left to run a socialist for President.
