A Union Under the Microscope
North America’s oldest labor union is facing pointed new scrutiny — and the accusations go well beyond political disagreement.
A report released by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative watchdog organization, alleges that the leadership of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) has been quietly working against the political interests of its own members — a membership that data suggests has moved decisively toward President Donald Trump and his agenda.
The BLET flatly rejected the report’s conclusions, calling it a “false press release by dark money groups who have no accountability to the truth.”
The Political Spending Gap
At the heart of the AAF’s report is a striking financial finding: despite evidence that a substantial portion of BLET’s membership supports Trump, the union’s political spending has flowed overwhelmingly in the opposite direction.
According to the report, 99% of the union’s party committee donations went to Democratic candidates and organizations. The figures cited to illustrate this pattern are specific.
In the 2016 election cycle, BLET donated $15,000 to the Democratic National Committee — which served as a key get-out-the-vote vehicle for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — while contributing nothing to the Republican National Committee.
By 2024, with union membership’s support for Trump well established, the pattern had barely shifted. The report states BLET made 24 separate donations to Democratic party committees totaling $53,400 during that cycle, compared to just two donations to Republican committees amounting to $2,000.
In total, the report claims the union directed more than $26 million toward political activity in recent years — a figure the AAF describes as “shocking” given the political composition of the membership it represents.
[Suggested Link: How union political spending is tracked and reported in the U.S.]
A Membership Moving Right, Leadership Staying Left
The AAF report frames the spending disparity as a symptom of a broader rupture in American labor politics — one playing out across multiple industries.
Recent Teamsters polling cited in the report showed a 60/40 split in favor of Trump among union members. Exit polling from the 2024 election found that working-class voters without a college degree backed Trump over Kamala Harris by a margin of 56% to 42%.
Against that backdrop, the report documents a series of moves by BLET leadership that it characterizes as politically misaligned with the membership. A review of the union’s social media activity found 14 posts in the lead-up to the 2024 election that criticized the first Trump administration’s policies while framing Biden administration actions favorably.
“The messaging was clearly intended to skew union members toward the Democratic presidential ticket,” the report states. “In these tweets, they attacked nearly every major Trump-era rail policy decision while framing the Biden administration’s actions positively.”
The union’s 2024 endorsement of the Harris-Walz ticket is also cited, along with its documented ties to prominent Democrats including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is currently mounting another Senate campaign.
The AAF does acknowledge that BLET has not been uniformly partisan. The report notes the union applauded Vice President JD Vance and the bipartisan reintroduction of the Railway Safety Act earlier this year — a recognition that complicates a fully one-sided picture.
Spending on Travel, Hotels, and Resorts
The report’s criticism extends beyond political donations into what it calls “waste and abuse” of member dues.
According to the AAF’s findings, BLET spent more than $5 million on hotels and conferences in recent years. More pointed is the allegation that over $2 million of that total went specifically to casinos and resorts.
“The union appears more concerned with staying at entertaining destination resorts than they do being thrifty with their members’ dues,” the report states.
Leadership compensation is also flagged as a point of disconnect. Multiple top union officials reportedly earn in excess of $200,000 annually, with both the union’s president and vice president drawing salaries above $300,000.
[Suggested Link: Union executive compensation — how it compares across major U.S. labor organizations]
The AAF’s Broader Argument
Tom Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, did not mince words in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
“The men pulling America’s freight voted for President Trump because they believe in secure borders and putting American workers first,” Jones said. “But their union bosses are busy living large on member dues and carrying water for the Left. They’ve turned a blue-collar brotherhood into a woke political machine that’s doing everything it can against the Trump-Vance agenda, and likewise, against everyday railroad workers. Every BLET member should be asking where their hard-earned dollars are really going.”
The Union Responds
BLET did not engage with the report’s specific allegations. In a statement to Fox News Digital, a union spokesperson dismissed the findings entirely.
“We do not comment on false press releases by dark money groups who have no accountability to the truth,” the spokesperson said.
The response offered no point-by-point rebuttal of the spending figures or political donation data cited in the AAF report. Whether the union will respond more fully — or whether the report prompts broader scrutiny from lawmakers or members — remains to be seen.
Conclusion
The allegations against the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen arrive at a moment of genuine tension within the American labor movement — a tension between a leadership class rooted in decades of Democratic alignment and a rank-and-file workforce that has shifted considerably rightward. Whether the AAF report produces meaningful consequences for BLET’s leadership, or is ultimately absorbed as another entry in the ongoing culture war over union politics, may depend largely on how the union’s own members choose to respond. As AAF’s Jones put it, the central question being posed to those members is straightforward: where are your hard-earned dollars really going?
