Let’s stipulate: Although membership in unions is ticking up again, the organized share of the workforce is still stuck at about 10 percent.
But so many other indicators suggest that labor’s long decline is over. Heralds of change include well-publicized organizing efforts in new sectors of the economy, broad public sympathy for the Hollywood writers’ struggle, and big wage gains by workers increasingly willing to strike for them.
There is also President Biden, the most outspokenly pro-labor president since Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) support Biden’s reelection partly because they get how the often-unheralded work of his administration is making a new era for labor possible.
Consider that on Wednesday, Biden’s Labor Department proposed a rule that would make an estimated 3.6 million salaried workers eligible for overtime pay. The week before, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), transformed by Biden’s appointments, issued a decision that will boost union organizing after decades in which management held the upper hand.
When a majority of workers sign up for a union, employers can either begin bargaining with the new unit or agree to an election in which workers decide whether to unionize. Under the new rule, if an employer is deemed to have engaged in unfair labor practices during the run-up to the vote, the NLRB will order the employer to recognize the union. This is a big deal because unfair labor practices are common in such campaigns.
On top of that, the day before, the NLRB issued another rule requiring prompt union elections, a further blow against employer delaying tactics.
“Taken together,” wrote Harold Meyerson, a close student of the labor movement, “this one-two punch effectively makes union organizing possible again.”
And in June, the NLRB made it harder for employers to classify workers as “independent contractors,” allowing them to join unions and access other labor law protections.
Lest anyone doubt where the administration stands, the Treasury Department released what it proudly called a “First-of-Its-Kind Report” on the economic value of organized labor. It found that unions raise the wages of their members by 10 to 15 percent, have “spillover effects” that benefit nonunion workers, “reduce race and gender wage gaps” and “boost businesses’ productivity.”
The report reflected how a large majority of the country feels. A recent Gallup survey found that 67 percent of Americans approve of unions. That’s down slightly from 71 percent last year, but Gallup emphasized that 2023 was “the fifth straight year this reading has exceeded its long-term average of 62%,” up from an “all-time low of 48% in 2009.” The survey also found a record-high 61 percent saying “unions help rather than hurt the U.S. economy.”
Mark Gaston Pearce, a visiting professor at Georgetown Law School and executive director of its Workers’ Rights Institute, said part of labor’s upsurge can be explained by the rise of a “new workforce” with higher expectations.
Many of these workers hold what were once labeled “transitional jobs” — Starbucks employees are an example — but don’t see them that way. They “feel comfortable” doing such work, he said, because they are often pursuing “endeavors outside of the workplace.” Pearce, who chaired the NLRB under President Barack Obama, summed up their attitude nicely: “I need employment to sustain myself, I do not live to work.”
In the meantime, he told me, they and members of the older workforce became increasingly militant. Workers “suffered and struggled through these tough economic times, as well as the devastations that the pandemic caused” and felt that higher corporate profits “did not reach them.” With labor markets tight, they could make demands they had not made before.
The result: The Labor Action Tracker at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations recorded more than 230 strikes already this year involving more than 320,000 workers, and unions have achieved major victories. Among them: The United Auto Workers won strong contracts at Deere and CNH Industrial while the Teamsters boasted of “the most historic collective bargaining agreement in the history of UPS.”
All this adds up to a large cultural shift, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute. The fact that unions are in the news again means it’s more likely that those who feel they are being treated unfairly “see a possible path to help remedy what’s going on in their own job.” This contrasts with recent decades when “unions were not being talked about at all.”
On this Labor Day, from the president on down, that’s no longer a problem.
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