Monster of the Week: Brent Booker
Unions are more popular than Frosted Flakes. Nearly 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions. This is higher than at any time since the 1950s.
So why are unions so weak? Because the leadership of the union movement has failed.
For example, meet Brent Booker.
Booker is the president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), a union of more than 500,000 construction and public-sector workers, and also vice-president of the AFL-CIO.
Over the last 50 years, union workers have seen their pensions, healthcare, and wages eaten away. In the construction industry, more than 46 percent of workers now rely on overtime to survive.
Bosses do everything they can to undermine existing unions, and to stop new ones from organizing. Corporations spend over $400 million a year on union busting. But big business has only succeeded because of do-nothing leaders like Brent Booker.
Last year, Booker took home $742,605. That’s more than ten times the average salary of a union construction worker, whose dues pay Booker’s salary. This example of open corruption is a gift to union busters everywhere.
These same union “leaders” shovel BILLIONS of dollars to capitalist politicians, overwhelmingly Democrats, with nothing to show for it.
In 2024, under Booker’s leadership, LiUNA nationally spent more than $23 million to support the Democratic Party. Nearly half of that, about $10 million, was spent on Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign.
The other $13 million was scattered to Democrats like candy at a 4th of July parade. LiUNA funded virtually every Democrat you could name — including openly pro-ICE politicians.
One-third of construction workers are immigrants. LiUNA itself was founded by immigrants. Yet the union gave $10,000 each to Washington Congressmembers Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez and Kim Schrier, both of whom voted for Trump’s anti-immigrant Laken Riley Act.
LiUNA has also maxed out its contribution to pro-ICE, pro-genocide Democrat Adam Smith for the 2026 election. Where’s this money going? It’s being spent against Kshama Sawant, an independent socialist calling to abolish ICE, to tax the rich for free healthcare, and for good union jobs for all.
At a Texas AFL-CIO meeting, Brent Booker said, "They use race to divide us. But we need to use our union cards to unite us. A lot of times we talk about solidarity. We need to use solidarity as a strategy….We can't just say I got your back, and then not actually have our brothers and sisters' backs."
But by funding politicians like Adam Smith, Booker and the LiUNA leadership are stabbing their immigrant members in the back.
At that same meeting, Booker asked the room, “When you look at politics...how can 20, 30, 40, whatever the percent of our members who vote against our endorsed candidates — why do they do that? Because they haven’t heard from us enough.”
No, it’s because union bureaucrats try to shove Democrats down our throats.
In 2024, unions spent $1.8 billion on political donations and lobbying efforts, overwhelmingly in support of Democrats.
With nearly $2 billion, the labor movement could launch a new working-class party. Instead, it’s wasted on anti-worker, pro-ICE, pro-genocide Democrats like Adam Smith.
Rank-and-file union members need to throw out overpaid bureaucrats like Brent Booker, break the union movement away from the Democratic Party, and elect revolutionary leadership to reignite a militant, fighting labor movement.