America's Oldest Union Accused of 'Betraying' Conservative Members — But Who's Behind the Report?

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen has been the bargaining voice for American railroad workers since 1863. Now a conservative research group says the union's leadership has turned it into a "woke political machine" that ignores the views of its own rank and file. The union calls the accusation a smear from a dark-money outfit with no accountability to the truth. The fight illustrates a broader fault line running through organized labor: an increasingly conservative membership confronting institutions that spend almost exclusively on Democrats.

What the Report Claims

The American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a Washington, D.C.-based conservative opposition research nonprofit, published a report in late March 2026 accusing BLET leadership of misaligning political spending with member preferences [1]. The report's central claims:

• BLET has spent more than $26 million on political activity in recent years, with 99% of party committee donations going to Democrats [1].
• In the 2016 cycle, the union gave $15,000 to the Democratic National Committee and nothing to the Republican National Committee [1].
• In the 2024 cycle, BLET made 24 donations to Democratic party committees totaling $53,400 and just two donations to Republican committees totaling $2,000 [1].
• The union spent more than $5 million on hotels and conferences and over $2 million at casinos and resorts [1].
• Multiple union officials earn above $200,000 annually, with the president and vice president each exceeding $300,000 [1].

The AAF report also cataloged BLET's social media activity, identifying 14 tweets in the lead-up to the 2024 election that criticized Trump administration policies while praising the Biden administration's railroad agenda [1]. The union endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket in 2024 [1].

Tom Jones, AAF's president and co-founder, framed the spending as evidence that "union bosses are busy living large on member dues" and have "turned a blue-collar brotherhood into a woke political machine that's doing everything it can against the Trump-Vance agenda" [1].

The Numbers in Context

BLET represents approximately 52,097 members according to its most recent annual report [2]. The union's PAC raised $807,476 during the 2023-2024 election cycle [3]. While PAC contributions skew heavily Democratic — 97% to Democrats, 3% to Republicans in recent cycles — PAC money is raised through voluntary contributions, not mandatory dues [3].

The $26 million figure cited in the AAF report covers multiple years and includes a broad definition of "political activity." The report does not break out what portion comes from voluntary PAC contributions versus general treasury funds, a distinction that matters under federal labor law.

The spending on hotels, conferences, casinos, and resorts — totaling roughly $7 million — is presented without comparison to overall operating budgets or to spending patterns at peer unions of similar size, making it difficult to assess whether these figures are unusual.

Who Is Behind the Report?

The AAF was founded in 2020 and is classified as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit [4]. It is not required to disclose its donors. What public filings reveal about its funding paints a clear ideological picture:

• In its first year, the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, provided $335,100 — more than half of AAF's total funding [5].
• The following year, CPI provided another $210,000; Russell Vought's Center for Renewing America gave $100,000; and Stephen Miller's America First Legal Foundation contributed $25,000 [5].
• Additional funding has come through the 85 Fund, associated with conservative legal strategist Leonard Leo [5].

Tom Jones previously directed opposition research for Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign and worked for Republican senators Ron Johnson, Jim DeMint, and John Ensign [5]. The AAF gained attention for building a "watchlist" of Biden administration nominees and government employees [6].

A BLET spokesperson responded to the report with a single statement: "We do not comment on false press releases by dark money groups who have no accountability to the truth" [1].

The union did not address individual allegations with documentation or offer a detailed rebuttal.

The Political Divide Inside Unions

The tension the report highlights is real, even if its framing is contested. Pew Research Center data from 2024 shows that roughly six in ten union voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while about four in ten associate with the GOP [7]. Among working-class voters without a college degree — a demographic that includes many BLET members — 56% supported Trump versus 42% for Harris in 2024 [1].

Teamsters polling data, cited in the AAF report, suggested a roughly 60-40 split favoring Trump among the broader Teamsters membership, of which BLET is a division [1]. The Teamsters notably declined to endorse either presidential candidate in 2024, a break from their traditional Democratic alignment — though BLET issued its own Harris endorsement [1].

Source: OpenSecrets

Data as of Mar 1, 2025CSV

Across the entire labor sector, the disparity between member political views and institutional spending is stark. Labor PACs directed $93.2 million to Democrats and $11.8 million to Republicans during the 2024 cycle [8]. A Fortune analysis found that 99% of union advocacy money goes to liberal groups, despite roughly 40% of union household members voting Republican [9].

What the Law Actually Allows

Federal labor law draws a distinction between dues used for collective bargaining and dues used for political purposes. Two Supreme Court decisions govern this space:

Communications Workers v. Beck (1988) established that private-sector workers who are required to pay union dues as a condition of employment may demand a refund of any portion spent on activities unrelated to collective bargaining, including political spending [10]. However, exercising Beck rights requires first resigning union membership and then formally objecting — a process critics call burdensome and subject to workplace pressure [9].

Janus v. AFSCME (2018) went further for public-sector employees, ruling that mandatory agency fees violate the First Amendment [11]. After Janus, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees saw a 98% decline in nonmember agency-fee payers [11]. But railroad workers like BLET members fall under the Railway Labor Act, a separate federal framework that predates the National Labor Relations Act, and are not directly covered by Janus.

The AAF report does not allege specific statutory or constitutional violations. No federal regulator — neither the Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards nor the National Labor Relations Board — has announced an investigation into BLET based on the report's claims. The practices described, including endorsing candidates, making PAC contributions, and spending on conferences, fall within normal union discretion under existing law.

What Members Would Lose

Economists who study union wage effects provide consistent findings on what decertification or right-to-work provisions mean for workers. The U.S. Treasury Department found that union-covered workers earn approximately 10 to 15% more than comparable nonunion workers, with more recent estimates pegging the premium at 12.8% [12].

Research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that right-to-work laws reduce unionization rates by about 4 percentage points within five years, with wages dropping roughly 1% overall [13]. In high-unionization industries like construction and transportation, the effects are sharper: unionization drops by nearly 13 percentage points and wages fall by more than 4% [13].

BLET's recent bargaining results illustrate the concrete value of representation. In October 2025, members ratified a contract with Union Pacific that includes 18.8% in raises over five years — 4% in 2025, 3.75% in 2026, 3.5% in 2027, 3.25% in 2028, and 3% in 2029 — along with improved health benefits and accelerated vacation accrual [14].

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data as of Jan 1, 2025CSV

Union membership nationwide has declined from 13.4% in 2000 to 9.9% in 2024, and the labor movement operates in a context where business interests outspend labor PACs by a ratio of roughly 16 to 1 in total political contributions [8][15].

The Track Record of Similar Reports

The AAF's report on BLET fits a pattern of conservative advocacy group publications targeting union spending practices. The Freedom Foundation, a free-market advocacy organization, has claimed to help more than 131,000 public-sector workers opt out of union membership, costing unions over $258 million in dues [16]. In Florida, legislation backed by conservative groups led to the decertification of unions covering 63,000 workers in a single year [16].

Whether these campaigns improve conditions for the workers they claim to represent is contested. Proponents argue they restore individual freedom and force unions to be more responsive. Critics point to the wage and benefit data: the Economic Policy Institute found that strong unions set pay standards that nonunion employers follow, with a high school graduate in a 25%-unionized industry earning 5% more than a peer in a less unionized sector [17]. When unions weaken, that spillover effect erodes.

The House Education and the Workforce Committee, chaired by Virginia Foxx, has opened investigations into 12 unions for fraud and corruption [18]. These investigations are separate from the AAF report and focus on financial mismanagement rather than political spending alignment.

What Happens Next

The AAF report has generated media coverage primarily in conservative outlets and has not, as of this writing, triggered formal regulatory action. BLET has not issued a detailed response beyond its dismissal of the report as coming from a "dark money" organization.

The underlying tension — between a labor movement that directs political spending almost exclusively to one party and a membership increasingly split across partisan lines — is unlikely to resolve through a single report. The proposed Employee Rights Act, which would require unions to obtain opt-in permission before spending dues on political activity, has drawn support from more than 80% of union household members in polling but has not advanced through Congress [9].

For BLET's 52,000 members, the practical question remains whether the union's bargaining power — which recently delivered an 18.8% raise package — outweighs their objections to its political alignment. That calculation is personal, and it is one that neither the AAF report nor the union's dismissal of it fully addresses.