Labor Unions Hate Robots—and It's Stopping Democrats From Delivering on Affordability

Democrats have a union problem. They have tied their political fortunes to unions, public and private, in ways that exacerbate intraparty conflict while stymieing both progressive and moderate goals. That's not just a problem for the party. Democratic deference to unions creates economic hurdles for much of the country—almost everyone who isn't in a union, and even some people who are—because today's unions function as roadblocks to the future.

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To understand the party's problem, consider that the two most powerful words in Democratic politics in 2026 are abundance and affordability. Both represent rival party factions.

The abundance faction is a predominantly young, educated, and urban cohort of policy wonks, journalists, and activists who generally believe that the Democratic Party has overemphasized identity politics while moving too far to the left on economics, particularly when it comes to urban governance and housing policy. They tend to favor technological progress and measurable gains in efficiency. One of the movement's core insights is that Democrats, who essentially have uniparty control of America's biggest, most important cities, need to deliver better governance and a better standard of living for their constituents—and that to do this they must embrace deregulation, private business, market mechanisms, and high-quality policy analysis.

That starts with housing, which has been overregulated to the point of strangulation, resulting in shortages that have dramatically increased home prices in and around the country's most desirable cities. The core issue is one of supply and demand, and Democratic politicians have often chosen to restrict supply and subsidize demand. In the abundance view, what those cities need (and what Democrats need to deliver) is more housing, primarily via market mechanisms that allow developers to build. More supply will ease demand and lower prices.

From this insight—that markets are an efficient and necessary way to deliver more goods at lower prices—an entire theory of policy flowered. What if market mechanisms are a good way to deliver all sorts of goods beyond housing? What if markets depend on developers, entrepreneurs, and businesspeople who are often quite wealthy? What if building new things, and even new labor-saving technologies, was the path to widely shared prosperity? What if there was an entire policy agenda devoted to delivering these goods via these processes? Perhaps you could call it an abundance agenda.

The abundance advocates are not libertarians. They tend to favor some form of social welfare spending. They sometimes say they want government to be good at doing and building things, like high-speed rail. But even this is a welcome acknowledgment that, in general, government is not great at doing things. Much of the movement amounts to the reinvention of Adam Smith from observational data, the primary observation being that Democratic Party governance has been a disaster. Better late than never.

On the opposite side of the party are the affordability mongers. Yes, abundance types will sometimes use the word too, but affordability has been more associated with politicians like Zohran Mamdani, the young member of the Democratic Socialists of America who is also now the mayor of New York City. Mamdani's social media–savvy mayoral campaign helped boost affordability into political buzzword status.

Affordability is partly a response by the party's left flank to the abundance movement's market-friendly critique, and sometimes it comes with a grudging acknowledgement that the construction of new homes might require actually letting developers build some homes. But mostly it's a rhetorical dodge, a marketing gimmick that allows the socialist-curious and their fellow travelers—the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren axis—to disavow responsibility for the party's many policy mistakes while pushing further interventions into the economy.

Abundance is how you get a one-bedroom apartment that costs less than an aircraft carrier within walking distance of a cute matcha shop. Affordability is how you get subsidized daycare and city-run grocery stores.

While these two factions are at odds, they share a key premise, which is that modern life is too expensive for ordinary people, especially in American cities. One reason life is so expensive is an obstacle that neither side is well-equipped to deal with: labor unions. Democrats say they want abundance and affordability for America, but deferring to union demands will mean they can't deliver either.

Driverless Cars, Deadhead Ubers, and Expensive Groceries

Public sector labor unions are key drivers of bloated spending, low performance, and all-around inefficiency in state and local governments. Private sector labor unions have repeatedly attempted to block labor-saving technologies, create legal requirements that slow new construction, and push tax policies that would undermine innovation and entrepreneurship, specifically in the tech sector.

For the affordability faction, which favors big-government solutions and top-down control, unions are an affirmative good, a source of both high-paying working-class jobs and partisan political muscle. For the abundance faction, labor is a longstanding part of the Democratic coalition, an interest group to be criticized occasionally but ideally kept inside the tent. Some abundance-aligned writers have taken a more aggressive line against union-driven economic sclerosis, but few high-profile Democratic politicians have been willing to cross organized labor in significant ways, especially in deep-blue urban districts and states.

The party's capture by labor interests is particularly visible in debates about the role of robots and automation in the economy. Take Massachusetts, where in 2023 there were more than 134,000 car crashes, an average of more than 367 a day. Many of these are minor accidents, but some are serious, and some—too many—result in fatalities.

In 2022, more than 430 people died from traffic accidents in Massachusetts. Bay State traffic fatalities have dropped somewhat since, but vehicle accidents still kill hundreds of people in the state every year. Many fatal accidents probably would not have happened were it not for a driver under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Most years, roughly a quarter to a third of the state's auto fatalities involve an alcohol-impaired driver.

Driving has obvious public benefits for both personal transportation and shipping. It is also a risky activity. The danger comes primarily from poor human judgment: impairment, distraction, or inability to think and act quickly in an emergency situation.

Until recently, there was no way to eliminate human judgment from the act of driving. Only human beings, imperfect as we are, could operate a vehicle.

That is no longer true. Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, operates self-driving cars that are increasingly capable of navigating streets on their own. The company began limited operations in the San Francisco area in 2021; it now runs fleets of taxis in at least 10 cities, with further expansions planned. Other companies, such as Tesla, are also building self-driving cars, with varying degrees of success.

The technology isn't perfect, but it's rapidly advancing. The clearest sign of its success is in the safety data—Waymos are far, far safer on every major safety metric than human-driven vehicles. The more that people substitute robot cars for human-operated cars, the safer our roads will be.

But after Waymo began mapping Boston's streets in preparation for a service launch in the city, the local Teamsters union helped form a coalition to stop it. Saying they had concerns about autonomous vehicle safety, the Teamsters supported a city ordinance that would subject self-driving cars to expansive bureaucratic oversight. Waymo says the ordinance would effectively prohibit the company from operating in the city, calling it an "unprecedented ban on a technology." Given that the group the Teamsters joined was named Labor United Against Waymo, it's reasonable to assume that a de facto ban was, in fact, the goal.

"Driverless cars and trucks pose a serious threat to public safety, our communities, and the livelihoods of the countless dedicated men and women across the Commonwealth who work as professional drivers," Tom Mari, President of Teamsters Local 25, said in October 2025. Given Waymo's extensive and well-documented safety track record, it is hard to take the group's safety concerns seriously. They were worried about preserving jobs. And to preserve those jobs, they were willing to oppose a new technology that is demonstrably safer than human drivers.

They're not the only ones. In California's gubernatorial primary, both former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, widely viewed as a more moderate (for California) party stalwart, and Tom Steyer, a left-wing billionaire backed by the party's progressive wing, supported union positions opposing automated trucking.

"AI shouldn't put California truckers out of work to pad Big Tech's profits," Steyer posted on X. "As governor, I'll reverse the DMV's autonomous trucking rules and keep human drivers on the road." Similarly, Becerra posted that "when it comes to automation, jobs and safety come first. Trucks still need drivers."

In March, a top official for the California Federation of Labor Unions, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, posted gleefully about her expectation that Becerra would support "our position on Autonomous Vehicles" and that she appreciated "the near unanimity of Dem candidates in this issue." Here was a union leader publicly celebrating that Democrats were practically united in supporting labor's crusade against new technology. This, she wrote, was "progress." Considering the promise and potential of autonomous trucking, one might reasonably argue it was the opposite.

Waymo does not yet operate an autonomous long-haul trucking fleet. But already there are demonstrations and pilot programs, like one in Texas, that show promise in making semitrucks fully self-driving. Large trucks are involved in a disproportionate share of auto fatalities, and autonomous versions of those trucks would almost certainly be safer than the human drivers Steyer wants to keep on the road. Yes, autonomous vehicles can make mistakes. But they cannot fall asleep, drive drowsy, become distracted, or operate a vehicle under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Autonomous trucks wouldn't just be safer. They would be cheaper and more efficient, and they would help lower the cost of consumer goods, especially groceries.

Even—especially—the safest human drivers need to sleep. But an autonomous truck could operate for 24 hours a day without needing to stop for food or rest, cutting transit times dramatically. Autonomous trucks are also expected to be more fuel efficient, reducing not only the cost but the environmental impact of shipping. They could also help solve staffing problems. The American Trucking Associations claims the industry is short 60,000–80,000 drivers. There are reasons to be wary about taking that number at face value. But it's clearly true that fewer drivers (human or bot) mean more expensive transportation costs, which can be passed on to consumers. By 2035, self-driving trucks could generate $9 billion in consumer savings annually, under an optimistic scenario, according to a 2026 report conducted by the consultancy Steer and commissioned by the autonomous trucking company Aurora.

Self-driving trucks would also threaten the employment of many unionized truck drivers; a self-driving truck running a 24-hour shift might replace as many as three union jobs. That's why the Teamsters Union, which represents truckers, wants mandates that require a human driver even in trucks that are nominally driving themselves. Steyer's opposition to self-driving trucks amounts to a one-way transfer from ordinary consumers to organized labor in the form of higher prices—and a net loss for everyone in an automobile, in terms of road safety.

This pattern appears everywhere: Unions oppose robots that would otherwise deliver broad-based cost and efficiency gains to the general public.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents grocery checkers, opposes automated self-checkout systems. Those systems help prevent retail theft, and they lower grocery costs; the union's demand is effectively to make grocery prices higher.

A fall 2024 strike by dockworkers in the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) was nominally about wage disputes but was really about automation. The strike increased costs for retailers and threatened the larger economy, with J.P. Morgan estimating a likely impact of $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion per day. But despite the economic impact, then-President Joe Biden supported the union, reportedly producing research supporting the Longshoremen in negotiations and inviting shipping industry representatives to a meeting so that the White House could make the case for the union's side.

More than anything else, the union wanted a total ban on automation. "The ILA is steadfastly against any form of automation—full or semi—that replaces jobs or historical work functions," the union wrote in an unsigned October 2024 statement. They had been offered a 50 percent pay increase, but that wasn't enough. "We will not accept the loss of work and livelihood for our members due to automation. Our position is clear: the preservation of jobs and historical work functions is non-negotiable."

Even for a union communication, this was unusually blunt. But the preservation of jobs and historical work functions—which is to say, prohibitions on cost- and labor-saving technology—is a primary goal for many unions. If it had been up to a horse-and-buggy union, Americans would still be traveling by horse and buggy.

Instead of horses and buggies, today's unions merely insist on expensive Ubers that are burdened by artificial, legally enforced scarcity.

In Seattle, the city's ride-share union, which represents drivers of Uber and Lyft, pushed for a mandatory minimum wage for ride-share drivers. After the law went into effect, Seattle became the most expensive city in the country to hail an Uber, with the price of some trips increasing by 50 percent or more. As demand for ride-sharing suddenly dropped, unionized drivers ended up spending more time driving without a passenger, which is known as deadheading. In response, the union called for "a pause in onboarding new drivers until a reduction in unnecessary deadheading miles is achieved," along with "rules to maintain a balanced market where increases to driver supply don't continue outpacing trip growth."

The union's initial minimum wage advocacy hurt its own members. Rather than admit that the wage law backfired, the union chose to back restrictions on new drivers—pulling up the ladder for new workers while making ride-sharing both less affordable and less abundant for everyone.

Closed Shop

Unions often make it hard to operate nearly any kind of business, small or large. Achilles Heel, a well-regarded bar in Brooklyn, closed three days after its employees announced they had formed a union, citing financial problems, according to The New York Times. Similarly, Barboncino, a pizza shop in the borough, closed after its workers voted to unionize, citing "rising costs and diminished sales."

Unions make it more expensive and more difficult to run small businesses with low margins. They also make it difficult to own and operate large businesses.

In California, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) proposed a one-time wealth tax on billionaires in the state. Union-friendly groups estimate that it would generate about $100 billion in revenue over five years, though some policy experts say this likely dramatically overstates the effect. The tax "has the potential to completely destroy California's economy," warned the University of California, Berkeley, economist Enrico Moretti.

Residents will have the opportunity to vote on the tax later this year. If it passes, it will go into effect retroactively for the year 2025. Some billionaires have already exited the state, though not all explicitly cite the tax as the reason. Critics have warned that because the tax would hit paper wealth, such as ownership of a company that has not yet experienced a liquidity event, it could effectively force some founders to sell their companies, all but taking their businesses away from them.

California construction unions, meanwhile, have long used environmental laws—particularly 1970's California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)—to slow or stop construction, a practice known as "greenmailing." The goal of these campaigns isn't to protect the environment. It's to force costly delays and legal fees on developers in hopes of pressuring them into hiring union labor. Environmental concerns get deployed as a legally actionable, potentially expensive pretext for more nakedly self-interested union demands.

This ruse was taken nearly to the point of self-parody in May, when a union representing state attorneys and administrative law judges threatened a CEQA suit in response to a return-to-office demand. Perhaps the union actually cared about the environmental impact of their commutes; more likely, they just didn't want to go back to working at the office.

Fighting unions in drawn-out court proceedings is costly. But so is acceding to their demands. Unionized projects are more expensive to build; a 2021 RAND study found that project labor agreements, which specify (typically pro-union) hiring rules, add about 15 percent to the cost of affordable housing projects. The added expense is by design: Unions demand higher wages for the same work, which means union demands make affordable housing less affordable.

Blue State Blues

California, New York, and Massachusetts are longtime bastions of Democratic Party governance, especially in their major metro areas. They are also among the most expensive places to live in the United States, with significantly higher housing, transportation, and energy costs than red states in the Sun Belt. These are the states that need abundance, or even just something like real affordability, the most.

Yet prominent Democratic politicians in those states have been borderline obsequious to unions. In New York City, Mamdani is arguably the most pro-union New York mayor in decades, the sort of person who specifically talks about fighting inequality with "union density," which, as New Labor Forum notes, is a term more typically associated with union organizers. In 2024, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey gave a speech at the Massachusetts Building Trades Unions' annual convention, where she called herself "the proud daughter of union members" and announced the creation of a Labor Advisory Council, essentially giving unions a direct voice in state governance. A press release from her office noted that it's the state's first labor council in more than 50 years. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, which increased the minimum wage to $20 an hour for fast-food chains with more than 60 locations. The bill was heavily backed by unions, and Newsom held the signing ceremony at the Los Angeles offices of SEIU Local 721.

Some prominent abundance advocates have argued that Democrats need to break with unions on some issues. The writer Matt Yglesias has argued that unions would in some cases actually benefit from abundance, and thus union enthusiasts should support an abundance agenda. The Argument, a publication that often takes abundance-aligned positions, has chided blue-state politicians and activists for rejecting or slow-walking robot taxis; it also recently published an extensive piece by Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon on how public sector unions prioritize jobs above all else, rejecting merit and performance reviews and dragging down public services in the process. The core problem, they wrote, "is that public sector unions generally fight to minimize differences among employees, including both standouts at the top and weak links at the bottom." Their recommendation is in the title: Democrats should fire bad teachers and bad cops.

The same dynamic often plays out with private sector unions. While it's encouraging to have writers and intellectuals making the case for better policy, in practice, prominent Democratic politicians rarely stand up to union demands.

The party's most recent president, Biden, declared himself "the most pro-union president" in history. At one point he proposed what amounted to a $400 billion SEIU slush fund as part of an infrastructure bill. The proposal, which did not pass, would have funded home health workers; in order for states to get the money, they would have had to allow the federal government to dictate wages and let home health workers unionize.

Some moderate Democrats, such as Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, have broken with unions on key issues, such as collective bargaining laws. But most rising Democratic stars, especially those hailing from deep blue territories, appear deferential.

Newsom looks to be gearing up for a presidential run. Mamdani is the great young hope for the Democratic Party's progressives and socialists. Both have pushed policies intended to streamline the construction of new housing. These are concessions to the abundance crowd. At the margins, they might even have a positive impact on the housing market.

Yet it's hard to imagine a Democratic Party that is willing to push back meaningfully against union demands—demands that almost always value union jobs over technologies that save time, money, and lives. Unions aren't interested in affordability, and the only abundance they want is in the form of union jobs for a select few. Until Democrats learn this, they won't achieve either goal.

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