Employees in global workplaces commonly suggest they are being failed by trade union representatives that betray the political ideals of their institutions. The tenacity of this discourse requires interrogation, since the notion persists even in contexts that lack evidence of such practices occurring. Based upon a comparison of Kazakhstan and India, we suggest that there is a fundamental slippage between the emotive aspect of union politics and the banal realties of institutional processes. We explore how conservative and radical trade unions alike rely upon appeals to an affect of struggle, in order to rationalize their work as part of an international and historically continuous political project. The paper explains why it is in the bureaucratic nature of trade unions to betray such an affect.