Union Support is at its Highest in Decades — and Growing
This Labor Day, let’s celebrate the gains the unionization movement has made of late--but not lose sight of how far we still need to go. Elections have consequences.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2021, union membership in the United States was at 10.3 percent. To put that into perspective, in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the unionization rate was 20.1 percent with 17.7 million union workers.
But with the most pro-union administration in the White House since Franklin Roosevelt, the numbers of unionized workers--despite still being at a record low — is growing, and 70% of Americans approve of labor unions, according to the annual Gallup Labor Day poll. That’s an increase of three percent from last year.
This upswing is due to successful recent strikes that have helped raised people’s awareness of income inequality and the ways unions fight against it.
As we celebrate another Labor Day, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union president Lee Saunders explained:
People know and understand that life is better in a union. They know it means a bigger paycheck, better healthcare coverage, a more secure retirement, a safer workplace, and a lot more. Strong unions mean more vibrant communities and a healthier democracy. When you belong to a union, you have a voice. You’re not under the boss’ thumb. You have the power in numbers to make change on the job. And when unions thrive — when we can stand together to improve wages and working conditions — everyone benefits.
34% of poll respondents feel unions will become stronger than they are presently. Last year only 15% claimed to believe that.
Starbucks made history the past couple of years with more than 480 stores unionizing.
Two years ago, Amazon made history when Staten Island, NY employees voted to create the first unionized warehouse.
Microsoft entered into a neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), stating if it purchased Activision, it would not interfere with Activision Blizzard workers’ union rights.
Also two years ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren re-introduced a bill from 2017 and 2020, the “Nationwide Right to Unionize Act,” that would repeal Section 14(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, and make illegal right-to-work-for-less laws that prohibit unions from collecting dues from non-union members covered under union contracts.
Last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) won a decisive victory when it ruled it will make unionization efforts easier at companies that violate law resisting organizing efforts.
UAW members won record contracts with “the Big Three” automakers earlier this year.
2024’s “Most Honorable Mention” award goes to higher education employees, most notably graduate students.
According to reporting in The Guardian:
Unionized faculty members in higher education also grew by 7.5%, with a total of 402,217 unionized faculty members at over 600 institutions across 30 states and Washington DC. California, New York and New Jersey have the highest number of unionized faculty members.
A recent piece in Inside Higher Ed explained:
In 2012, the first year of the [National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College] study period, they had about 64,400 unionized employees among their ranks. But, by early 2024, that number surged to 150,100. That’s a 133 percent increase, and 38 percent of grad workers are now unionized.
As that report states, more than one in four faculty members are unionized. At the beginning of this year, 38% of graduate student employees were unionized —150,000 workers in 81 bargaining units.
Labor historian Joe Berry explained:
The trend has been definitely for people to organize. There’s a number of reasons for that, but I would say the №1 reason has been the progressive casualization of the faculty — the turning of the majority of the faculty into contingent [temporary] workers.
University of Southern California professor and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education, Adrianna Kezar, added:
The growth of non-tenure track faculty, postdocs, academic researchers, graduate and undergraduate students shows how unionization is becoming a tactic of choice for change.
Last week, Cornell University’s services and maintenance staff, on strike since August 18, along with the United Auto Workers (UAW), reached a tentative contract deal including wage increases up to 24.5 percent; a cost-of-living adjustment for custodians, groundskeepers, dining hall staff, gardeners, and others; time off; uniforms; and inclement weather and safety protections.
One crucial piece of federal legislation, the “Protecting the Right to Organize” (PRO) Act, seeks to grow and strengthen union membership by:
Introducing meaningful, enforceable penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights;
Expanding workers’ collective bargaining rights and closing loopholes that corporations use to exploit workers;
Strengthening workers’ access to fair union elections and requiring corporations to respect the results.
America has arrived at a crossroads, and the direction we take could plunge us deeper into neo-liberalism’s feudal tax cuts for the economic royalists, or again into an age where the wealthy pay their share of taxes and average workers producing the largess off which the wealthy profit will benefit from higher wages, better living standards, and democratic workplaces.
After forty long years, Reaganomics might finally be on its last leg.
This Labor Day, let’s celebrate the gains the unionization movement has made of late--but not lose sight of how far we still need to go.
Elections have consequences.
As progressive radio talk show host on Sirius XM and author Thom Hartmann warned:
If the neoliberals win and Biden [now Harris] and the Democrats back down, it’s unlikely America will simply slide back into a ‘friendly neoliberalism’ like we had before the Trump presidency.
Instead, we will almost certainly follow the path that Russia and Hungary have trod, embracing Friedman’s economic policies and the authoritarian strongman politics of oligarchy necessary to enforce them. It will be the end of the largest and most noble parts of the American Experiment.