Unions Offer a More Promising Future Than Politicians ( newrepublic.com )

The reality of the way that the institutions of organized labor, meaning the AFL-CIO, and the big unions, generally speaking, have mostly, in modern times, pursued a relationship with electoral politics [is] along the lines of, “We are an adjunct to the Democratic Party.” In some ways, it’s a natural sort of trap for unions to fall into, because we have a two-party political system and the Republicans want to destroy unions altogether. So it’s very easy for the Democrats to take labor for granted because they have the attitude of “Where else are you gonna go?” And you’ve seen, just in my lifetime, I think of the Clinton administration, the Obama administration, both administrations that got huge economic and other support from organized labor and didn’t really give that much back.
“By organizing workers, you naturally grow your own political power in a way that writing checks to politicians never does.”

What it means is that you change your focus from electoral politics to building labor power through worker organizing. And by organizing workers, you naturally grow your own political power in a way that writing checks to politicians never does.

If we can get working people and also unions and the institutions in the labor movement to turn their primary focus to building labor power and organizing new workers, what we will find is that political power naturally comes along with that. We can make the politicians come to us by making the labor movement strong. We don’t have to beg and cater to politicians in order to do nice things for the labor movement, you know. It’s really a shift in perspective and a shift in emphasis that I think if people would just focus more on building labor power, they’re going to get better political results in the long run.