Unions Make a Comeback
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 5, 2022
Labor Day has arrived in a year in which bountiful if selected hiring continues to surprise despite rising prices and in which labor unions are making a rebound in the public consciousness.
Even as the Labor Department on Friday reported monthly addition of another 315,000 jobs for August, the National Labor Relations Board confirms what we already have recognized as uptick in unionizing efforts.
Indeed, the 1200 petitions reflect a 58 percent increase over the 2021. The number of petitions filed in the first three quarters this year was more than the total in each of the last five years.
Perhaps less publicized has been rising public support for unionizing. A Gallup poll release last week reported that 71 percent of Americans indicated support for labor unions, up even from last year, as we have seen workers at several major companies win elections to organize. It’s the highest such approval point since 1965.
There has been interest as workers at a Starbucks in Buffalo, N.Y., became the company’s first U.S. location to unionize in December, kicking off a parade of more than 200 other Starbuck store votes to unionize. In April, workers at one of Amazon’s New York City facilities voted to become the first of the e-commerce giant’s U.S. locations to unionize. So too for Chipotle, where a Lansing, Mich., store voted for unions just last week.
There have been organizing efforts at Trader Joe’s, retailer REI, at Apple and even among Democratic campaign workers. New York City private-sector workers are joining unions at nearly twice the rate as in the next most active city, Seattle, and at five times the rate as in San Francisco or Los Angeles, according to a City of New York University study.
And in California, there was a big union development with passage of legislation that could transform worker bargaining by allowing fast-food workers to negotiate with the central owning business rather than only at each franchised outlet, a practice that has made unionizing difficult.
Lots of Reasons
Maybe it is the hot labor market that is behind renewed interest in unions, as a Washington Post take concludes. Maybe it is enough people being fed up with working conditions that have just pushed them too far especially during the ups and downs of covid economics. Maybe it is resentment about too many billionaires insisting that they need pay no taxes or share profits with underlings.
The number of people who are quitting their jobs in search of a better personal situation remains elevated. There are signs that forced work from home has now resulted in preferred work from home for many, and that if employers are requiring onsite attendance, workers want better compensation for commuting and perceived inconvenience.
With so many personal reasons, it is difficult to find specific numbers that explain it all in statistics, but there is no question that Americans across the political divides are seeing income gaps that they want addressed.
With some relaxation of recession fears has come business confidence in expanding workforces. With so many trading jobs, workers are benefitting right now, and thus, there is more interest in collective bargaining.
The Post suggested that even a cooling-off economy would not necessarily undo cultural shifts that have resulted in the rising popularity of unions, particularly among young, college-educated workers.
Even with these recent organizing efforts, symbolic changes at least, only one in 10 workers are unionized, and unions themselves are different entities. Teacher unions and construction unions may act in very different ways.
In the End, Wages
Of course, unionizing does not necessarily result in higher wages. It is one victory to unionize at these companies, but then comes negotiation over pay, and perhaps more critically, over working conditions, scheduling, breaks and covid exposure.
Some of the companies where unions have been elected, including Amazon, which is appealing the election in court, still are not talking to those new unions.
The whole idea is that an organized workforce speaks louder than a single worker. Some employers see this only as a negative, while others recognize that it can contribute to shared views towards market success and a means to help retain workers.
At Starbucks, the insistence that union drives happen store by store among 10,000 locations is proving a burden to organizing efforts.
That’s why the California law to allow workers to deal with centralized bargaining with national chains holds such promise for practical changes. It has the support of the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union.
A project with fast-food workers in which we encouraged writing their lives unleashed a stream of real-life problems in which working people — adults, not teens — had to beg for hours, put up with abusive managers, had to skirt food regulations to earn minimal wages. Working at two fast-food restaurants could not keep one of our writers from living in a shelter.
If signed by the governor, this California law would allow hundreds of thousands of fast-food workers to bargain collectively and would create a state worker-management council empowered to require higher pay and improved working conditions for the industry. The bill sets a ceiling on a potential minimum wage for fast food workers at $22 next year, when statewide minimum wage will reach $15.50. Restaurant industry groups opposed the bill.
In New York, a statewide labor board in 2015 set the minimum wage for the industry at $15 per hour. It marked one of the first major victories for the Fight for $15, a labor movement that aimed to raise wages and unionize the fast-food sector.
Joe Biden has pledged to be the most pro-union president in history. “We’re seeing a resurgence of worker organizations and unionization,” Biden said earlier this month. “Where I come from, that’s a good thing, and it’s long overdue.”
Washington Post columnists Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent argue that support for unionizing ought to be a stronger political focus for the parties, which continue to split on this issue. They note that a poll from the progressive firm Data for Progress shows a 12-point swing for a generic Democratic candidate who supports unionization efforts versus a Republican candidate who opposes them.
At least it is something we could disagree about in the country without threats of civil war.
##