Autoworkers are the latest to spotlight the power of US labor. What is the state of unions today?

NEW YORK – U.S. exertions unions are as soon as once more flexing the muscle groups in the nationwide spotlight.

The United Auto Workers’ tentative agreements with Detroit’s Big Three automakers may just finish the union’s six-week strike. Gridlock persists in Hollywood between actors and main studios, whilst hospitality employees in Las Vegas, Detroit, Southern California and past are preventing for higher pay and protections.

But in spite of historic walkouts and record contract deals observed this yr, there is a lot stacked towards exertions organizers. Union club charges in the U.S. were falling for many years due to adjustments in the economic system, employer opposition, rising political partisanship and felony demanding situations.

“Even though we’re seeing stronger support for unions, (with) the highest popularity of union favorability in polls since at least the 1960s, translating the worker desire for representation into actual representation is really hard under our current system,” Alexander Colvin, dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, instructed The Associated Press earlier this month.

Still, some exertions advocates see rising momentum. Here’s the place issues stand.

WHAT’S DRIVING UNION ACTIVITY NOW?

Across the U.S., masses of 1000’s of employees have participated in strikes this yr. Labor activism has surged in tandem with hovering prices of residing and emerging inequality, specifically the rising pay hole between employees and best executives. Those inequities handiest was extra obvious right through the COVID-19 pandemic as U.S. firms raked in document income.

“It’s kind of a perfect storm, (so) you see a lot of union movement these days,” stated Eunice Han, an assistant professor at the University of Utah focusing on exertions economics.

The tightest U.S. exertions marketplace in a long time is additionally giving employees leverage to problem their employers.

The unemployment charge in the U.S. is shut to 50-year lows and there are now about 1.5 open jobs for each and every unemployed particular person, in accordance to contemporary executive knowledge.

Open jobs manner American employees are quitting in upper numbers as a result of they are assured of touchdown a greater paying activity. The unemployment rate 3.8%, additional signaling leverage for staff.

Success or partial victories in high-profile union fights too can encourage organizing throughout industries — and produce courses for long term contract talks. A takeaway from the UAW’s strike, as an example, “is to act aggressively and creatively” while finding allies, said Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab and a former field attorney for the NLRB.

UAW President Shawn Fain “didn’t do things the same way that had been done in the past,” Creighton added, noting the tactic of hitting General Motors, Ford and Stellantis at once through a build-up of targeted strikes, which were communicated to members on platforms like Facebook Live. Support from government officials, including President Joe Biden, also strengthened the campaign.

UNION RATES HAVE BEEN FALLING FOR DECADES. WHY?

While pickets lines seem to be everywhere this year, union membership rates have been declining for decades. Only 6% of U.S. private-sector workers belong to unions today, a sliver of the 35% that were union members in 1953.

Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, points to the post-World War II Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted the power of labor unions — as well as factors like relocating manufacturing jobs overseas and an uptick in anti-union stances from both employers and lawmakers that grew in the 70s and 80s.

Vachon notes one pivotal moment in particular, when President Ronald Reagan fired all striking air traffic controllers in 1981.

“That sent a really clear signal to the business community that it’s a-okay to be completely anti-union and to be so in a very belligerent way, because even the president of the United States is doing it,” he said.

Separately, with the rise of the gig economy, some large companies have recategorized employees as “contractors,” making it harder for them to unionize. And growth in industries that haven’t had a strong history of union membership, such as technology, has also contributed to the decline in unionization.

Last year, the number of both public- and private-sector U.S. workers belonging to unions actually grew by 273,000, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the U.S. workforce grew at an even faster rate, meaning the percentage of those belonging to unions fell slightly.

WHAT LABOR LAWS IMPACT UNIONS TODAY?

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 granted private-sector employees the right to unionize. A 1961 executive order from President John F. Kennedy allowed federal employees to organize. That came around the same era that states also began to pass labor laws for their own public workers.

Some states in the South and lower Midwest “will allow police and firefighters to collectively bargain, but not state employees. Or they’ll let state employees bargain, but they can only bargain over wages,” Vachon said. “That shows you how important the labor law is. It really sets the framework for which workers can either organize a union successfully or not.”

A handful of states also have “right to work” laws which, in unionized workplaces, require unions to represent everyone regardless of whether individuals choose to pay dues or formally join. Such legislation has been criticized for undermining the financial resources and bargaining power of unions.

Attitudes towards unionization have become increasingly partisan, too, and also divided geographically. Politically “blue” states tend to have higher unionization rates than “red” states. Several states have also dialed back on union protections in recent years, Han said.

MORE CHALLENGES ORGANIZING TODAY

Unionization efforts have expanded but many are taking place where there is little history of organized labor, creating a higher bar for workers.

Colvin issues to Starbucks employees who’ve observed union drives clipped in the last year. Starbucks has been accused of chilling group through closing unionized stores and firing pro-union workers.

There are also limits for organizers under current labor law. That means that what worked in auto workers’ labor campaign, for example, may not be possible for other industries.

“We have a labor law that was designed in the era in the 30s and 40s, when auto plants of 10,000 workers (were organizing),” he said. Starbucks is “split into these small coffee shops of 15 workers. … They need to join together to have any kind of bargaining power against a big employer. But our labor law isn’t structured to help them do that,” Colvin stated.

Service jobs may also be laborious to prepare due to part-time paintings and excessive turnover charges. The identical can also be stated for Amazon warehouses, the place there were pushes for unions.

According to a Gallup poll, public approval of more potent unions now stands at 67%, down fairly from the 71% remaining yr, however mirroring ranges remaining observed in the Nineteen Sixties. Creighton and others upload that younger other people specifically are main nowadays’s price.

But the want to prepare can handiest pass to this point with out coverage exchange, professionals say.

“We’re absolutely at a turning point in people’s consciousness,” Vachon provides. “Whether that translates into actual a change of direction for union density, I think, is going to depend a lot on how that consciousness plays out in the political arena.”