Willa Needham | October 8, 2025

Kristoffer Smemo, UCLA Labor Studies instructor, recently published an analysis of conservative politics and the labor movement in New Labor Forum, a national labor journal from the Murphy Institute at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. The piece, titled “Building a Conservative Labor Movement: American Compass and the Right’s Pro-Worker Policy Agenda,” unpacks the vision and influence of the conservative think tank American Compass. 

Founded in 2020 by conservative economist Oren Cass, American Compass proposes a new right-leaning approach to labor and the economy that departs from the current neoliberal Republican consensus. The approach, and its rhetoric, combines Nixon-era blue collar appeals with modern-day anti-immigrant sentiments to construct a nativist “working-class nationalism.” 

The think tank presents a vision for a conservative labor movement that is supportive of worker organizing, when channeled and controlled, so long as it advances the nuclear family and a subset of the “left behind,” white working class. American Compass drafts an agenda for a harsh crackdown on undocumented workers that is aligned with the federal government’s current anti-immigrant policies. 

“I am interested in American Compass because its agenda exposes a potential breakdown in the Democratic Party’s long standing alliance with organized labor,” Smemo said. “At the same time, its policy program reveals a deepening fault line in the MAGA coalition over what it would take to make ‘white working-class nationalism’ anything more than a campaign slogan, while testing the limits of the MAGA appeal to Black and Latino workers.”

In the article, Smemo argues that the project of American Compass uncovers a simmering anxiety in conservative political leadership over the recent increase of worker-led organizing and labor militancy. Smemo suggests the interests behind the think tank are attempting to curb an emergent working class movement with small concessions before it grows to a scale that meaningfully threatens economic and social stratification. 

Despite support from prominent members of the Trump cabinet, including JD Vance and Marco Rubio, American Compass has been unable to garner mainstream approval for worker organizing among the Republican political elite. For now, it seems that conservative leaders are hesitant to redistribute power from business interests to even the most narrow group of workers. 

Smemo is also the author of Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise, published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2024. Smemo is giving a talk on the ideas in his book, which explores liberal reforms adopted by some mid-century Republican politicians, and American Compass on Thursday, October 30th, on UCLA campus from 12-2 pm. 

Smemo is available to speak to journalists about the American conservative vision for the future of the labor movement and union organizing under Republican leadership.  Contact Willa Needham, UCLA IRLE communications specialist, at willaneedham@ucla.edu for media inquiries.