- Unions seem to be having a bit of a moment.
You may have heard about the successes of organizers
at Amazon warehouses or Starbucks coffee shops, places
that have historically been very difficult to unionize.
President Joe Biden has promised to be the most
pro-union president in American history, and as
of this filming, the entertainment industry is still hobbled
by a protracted strike by writers
and actors flexing their unionized muscle.
- In addition to this press, or perhaps because of it
public attitudes towards organized labor are higher
than they've been in almost 60 years.
71% of Americans now approve of labor unions
up from a low of 48% in 2009.
- Wow.
So people really like unions
and they really want to be in them.
Are we seeing a return
to the union glory days of the forties and fifties?
- Not really.
In fact, not at all.
Actual union membership as a percentage
of the workforce is at its lowest level of all time.
Despite the good PR,
America has never been less unionized than it is right now.
- Why is that?
Well, unlike many other countries where unions
are historically accepted and normalized,
America has a long tradition of putting organized labor
at the center of our political battlefield, resulting
in a lot of complex and sometimes confusing legislation.
- And beyond that, the economic, technological
and even cultural changes
of the last several decades have created a landscape
less hospitable to collective bargaining than ever before.
Despite their current popularity, the survival
of unions has yet to be negotiated.
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- Unions date all the way back to the 18th century.
When the Industrial Revolution crammed large numbers
of workers into factories,
inadvertently giving them the opportunity to
share their frustrations and interests.
They used two main tactics to increase their pay
and improve working conditions:
Collective bargaining, by which all members benefited
from the union's negotiations,
and strikes, which used work stoppages to
demonstrate the employer's reliance on their workforce.
- Organized Labor's heyday was in the 1940s and fifties.
Thanks, in part to governmental policies,
like the National Labor Relations Act of 1935,
which made it easier
and safer to organize unions without being spied on,
harassed or otherwise punished by employers.
Before that, it was common
for employers to use threats, intimidation, even violence
to keep their employees from organizing.
By the 1950s, about one in three American workers belonged
to a union, which is credited as a key factor
in that decade's relatively low economic inequality.
- But even back then, some business
and political leaders were working to weaken union's power.
The Taft Hartley Act passed in 1947
limited union's bargaining strategies,
like restricting certain kinds
of boycotts and made it easier for employers to
use non-union labor known as scabs to circumvent strikes.
Union leaders were also required to sign affidavits
denouncing any communist sympathies.
And anti-union propaganda
exploited white Southerners fear
of desegregation to stymie the spread
of unions in the textile industries of the south.
- The stagflation
of the 1970s severely damaged organized labor's power
and public image.
Business leaders managed to convince politicians
and even their employees
that unions were standing in the way of economic recovery.
Then in 1981, when Ronald Reagan,
who had once been a union leader himself, summarily fired
over 11,000 striking air traffic control workers,
it was seen as a potentially
fatal blow to the labor movement.
If the American president could take such an
unequivocal stance against the rights of striking workers
without any negative feedback from the voting public,
perhaps union's best days were really behind them.
- It's difficult to quantify union's effect on the economy
but there does seem to be a remarkable correlation
between union membership and low levels of income
and equality, and the decades of peak union strength
were not exactly bad for business either.
Perhaps that's why in recent years
as inequality has reached historic levels and a small number
of corporations dominate so much of our daily lives,
there's been a renewed interest
in unions as a potential counterbalance.
- But the American economy and the world are very different
than they were 60 years ago.
For one thing, globalization has taken one
of organized labor's primary tactics off the table.
If a factory owner doesn't want to give
into his striking workers' demands,
he can just move the factory overseas
to a country where unions aren't a problem.
America has lost a ton of manufacturing jobs as a result
and the ones that are left are less secure.
- American labor law is also much less hospitable
to unions than in other industrialized nations.
Right to work laws
passed in 28 states allow employees to opt
out of paying union dues even if they benefit
from the higher pay the union negotiated for them
which has crippled many union's ability to operate.
- And unlike in other countries
where organizers can negotiate
on behalf of all the workers in an entire company
or even an entire industry, labor leaders
in America must organize each individual workplace.
Starbucks by Starbucks,
Amazon warehouse by Amazon Warehouse.
Each one of these campaigns is expensive and time consuming
for already underpaid employees, and they face armies
of high price lawyers and consultants hired
by the company to stop them at all costs.
- There's another cultural trend working
against labor organizing: loneliness.
In his book Bowling Alone,
the political scientist Robert Putnam, chronicled how
Americans are becoming more isolated, more suspicious
and less likely to participate in social groups
like churches, bowling leagues, and yes, unions.
- Forming a union is a daunting and scary challenge
which requires strong bonds of trust and solidarity,
what social scientists refer to as social capital.
This was easier when hundreds
of people worked side by side in big factories.
But today, even if our employer is a giant corporation
we're more likely to work
in a small atomized environment or even from home.
Turnover is much more frequent.
How can you convince someone to help unionize
a place they don't expect to be at very long?
And we're more likely to spend our lunch breaks staring
at screens rather than chatting with coworkers.
- And yet, despite all these obstacles
the will to unionize is alive and kicking.
According to the National Labor Relations Board
there was a 53% increase of union petitions filed
in 2022 and strikes were up 52% from the previous year.
Activists are fighting to pass the
Protecting the Right to Organize Act
which would restrict some
of the tactics employers use to thwart unionizing efforts.
But with such a divided Congress
its chances are hazy at best.
- As the economist Suresh Naidu writes,
between the employer side advantages given by US labor law
and diminished workplace social capital
it is difficult to see a path to a persistent increase
in union density that is not concomitant
with a rewiring of workplace networks
and a transformation of American labor law.
- Seems tough, but the silver lining is
that any such transformation would start
with a rise in public support.
- Which is exactly what we're seeing now.
- [Both] And that's our 2 cents.
- [Katie] Thanks to our patrons
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(upbeat music)
- For more on leveraging your worker power
check out our episode,
How to Ask for a Raise.