Labor leader: Jason Small's vision for the AFL-CIO
The former Republican state Senator also weighs in on Democrats' failure to maintain union support in the 2024 elections.
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When I re-launched this newsletter last month, one of the first people I reached out to was Jason Small. I had interviewed him once before, in May 2023, and in that conversation the then-Republican state Senator addressed his party’s successes and pitfalls with singular candor. At the time, Small—a political moderate and member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe—was running for the position of Executive Secretary of the Montana AFL-CIO, a federation of 38 unions with over 50,000 members. Shortly thereafter, he was elected to the position; he ran unopposed.
During the 2024 Presidential campaign, unions across the country offered only tepid support for—and in some instances, rejected—Kamala Harris’ campaign, despite labor’s long history with the Democratic Party. I was particularly keen to ask Small to help explain this shift, at least within Montana.
In today’s interview, Small addresses the question with his typical frankness. Yet our conversation covers much more ground: we discuss his priorities for the 2025 Legislature—including a plan to simplify prevailing wage calculations, and his concerns over potential right-to-work policy. We also get into Small’s own colorful history as a union worker, and chat about what it means to be “the only” Republican at the AFL-CIO.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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Max: Can you tell me about your own history working in unions?
Jason Small: I started at the most remedial level. The week I turned eighteen, I went and signed up for the laborers union. Before that, I was pulling lumber on a green chain and a sawmill. So I went from making about $6.50 an hour to working a Davis-Bacon job, somewhere around $18-19 an hour.
It’s a funny story: [A couple of years later, at the end of a job], I picked up a calf roping chute from a guy just south of D.C. in Front Royal, West Virginia. I was a young kid, twenty years old or something, and all I wanted to do was get home. I lived with my grandparents then. So I drove from Front Royal to Spearfish, South Dakota in a straight shot.
I was twenty-something hours into driving and I was starting to doze off. I had everything I owned in this old ‘86 Chevy pickup. And I was paranoid. It had a sliding rear window, and I had a 32-inch TV; boy, that was my prized possession. And I had about $20,000 in cash [that I took out of] the bank when I left. And I hid that cash under the seat of the truck and tied the power cord from the TV around my arm, and went to sleep for about four or five hours at a rest stop in South Dakota.
I pulled into my grandpa's house a few hours later. I unhooked the trailer from my pickup, went upstairs to my room and flopped down in bed. I got about ten minutes of sleep, and he came in there and kicked me in the feet: “Come on, we gotta go ride.”
And I was dying. And I looked at him and said the first thing that popped into my mind: “I'm gonna go register for school real quick. Today's the last day.”
It turns out it actually was the last day (laughs). I knew Sheridan, Wyoming had a good welding program. So I went and enrolled, did that, got a little degree in metallurgy and worked a job in Colstrip at the plant. And then got in a boilermakers union, and that's where I started. I was an apprentice boilermaker. I did my entire apprenticeship in about 23 months.
I was a journeyman and I stepped up. I started paying attention to a lot of stuff, and when I was back in Colstrip, I took the position of bull steward for all the unions out at the plant—that's the guy who does the union business. You resolve conflicts between the unions and the company.
Then I was president of the union for years. Meanwhile, I ran for a Legislative seat and won that. At the end of my term, I stepped down from the union presidency.
It's been an interesting ride, my friend.
What does your day-to-day look like right now?
Well, I control the inner workings of the AFL-CIO. We're involved in a ton of things: political campaigns, anything that's good for workers, middle-class families, stuff like that.
What’s it like being an Republican at the AFL-CIO?
Well, I'm the only one. It doesn't matter if I'm with Republicans or Democrats, I'm the odd man out. I fit in every room, but at the same time, I don't fit in any of them. I have good rapport across the board with most everybody.
I'm surrounded by people who are a little further left than me all the time, but I still talk to my same Republican friends. I'm still the pro-labor Republican guy. I don't like to dive off on the social issues stuff. I see no place for it in politics.
Does right-to-work feel like a pretty sharp divide within the GOP?
It could be, right? But there's never been a group of Republican legislators that were that extreme [to pass it]. A lot of them are union people anyway.
So Montana is kind of unique. Even though this is now a conservative state—and we have a Republican conservative majority—a lot of those folks are just people like me. They have some conservative values, but they're not against blue-collar workers making a fair paycheck. It has really surprised me, the folks that have come up to me over the years and said, “Hey, my grandkids are graduating or they got this going, you think you can help get them a good union job?” I’m always happy to help, and point them in the right direction.
Do you anticipate more attempts at right-to-work legislation this coming session?
Oh, I’m sure there will be. They'll try to make changes to how union members are paid in the workforce. There will be right-to-work. There always is, to some degree.
You don't sound terribly concerned, though?
Well, yes and no. You can't let your guard down. You can't let the camel's nose under the tent flap because then all of a sudden that son of a bitch is inside (laughs).
Who's the camel in this metaphor?
Take your pick (laughs).
What feel like your other top priorities in the 2025 session?
We would like to pass some legislation to fix prevailing wage laws and how prevailing wages are determined. There's always swings in the wages, right? It's just volatile. So it turns into a math game between the contractors and the unions and employers. This year we saw 30% swings in prevailing wages. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower.
Is there an industry in particular where that swing has been really dramatic?
This year it was truck drivers. We're in a nationwide truck driver shortage. And the prevailing wage calculation shows that they need to drop their wages 30%.
So what’s the mechanism to fix that issue?
Well, it can be done via “line of sight” through the Department of Labor and Industry. They can set prevailing wages using wage data that they directly receive into their system. And I think that could be a solution. It would prove somewhat less volatile. We haven't 100% locked in how we want to go about this yet, but that's one thing we're looking at.
One of the other more obvious things that should have been done a long time ago is make a push to require female portable restrooms on job sites, to have a better environment for the women workers.
We have some autonomous vehicle legislation we want to probably push, too. We want to get ahead of any bad legislation that's gonna coming up, and put sideboards on it so it's not out of hand.
Is the concern that autonomous vehicles could replace union jobs?
It's somewhat worker protection for the Teamsters. They drive trucks, vehicle operations, stuff like that. It's also a public safety deal. We just want to get ahead of it [in case] we start having accidents or shit like that.
We're gonna bring some legislation to shore a few things up. We might get involved in some electric vehicle stuff. I can't say that for sure yet.
We'll be supporting Medicaid reauthorization. That’s of the utmost importance if you're an Indian. It's one way to help fund the Indian Health Service, so it's extremely important to the tribes. That's also what's keeping all the rural clinics and hospitals open.
Switching gears, it was pretty clear this election season that a lot of union workers were not very enthused about Kamala Harris. What do you think went wrong for the Democrats, in terms of union support? Did you see a similar dynamic play out in Montana?
I think the building trade members tend to lead a bit further to the right. [But] I do know one thing—I think Jon Tester was pulling 57% among members.
Why do you think Harris struggled to make inroads with union members?
I think a lot of it would be the more environmental branches of the Democratic Party—it hurts a lot of folks' jobs.
At Colstrip, for sure. Obviously there's been an environmental tax on the new power plant that was built at Laurel. Enviros got that back-burnered for quite some time and got a permit yanked once. Those are blue-collar workers that are building that shit. And I think the general assumption among a lot of the workers is that the enviros and the Democrats are in lockstep.
We've seen the enviros lock up the permitting at Roundup [coal mine]. There's been battles over the years at the Stillwater mine. Enviros have on several occasions thrown them under the bus up there, but they've also made some agreements with them; Good Neighbor Agreements and whatnot.
You also can't overlook the elephant in the room: national Democratic messaging doesn't work well in Montana.
Jason, is there anything you want to add before we wrap up?
Advocating for workers' rights, that can go across the aisle, right? Everybody understands the importance of workers' rights; fair pay for a fair day’s work, worker protection that gives people some job security, so they're not always in peril or not always wondering if they're gonna have a job when they show up to work the next day.
We want Republicans to have good jobs, Democrats to have good jobs. I want women to have good jobs, men to have good jobs. Hell, it doesn't matter. I don't want your kids starting down at five bucks an hour. Let's get some fair wages. It's good for the economy. It keeps businesses open. Every dollar that comes into the state, into a worker's pocket, at least a fraction of that's gotta go to businesses in the state. That's how we keep the ball rolling.
Good article