2022 is the most promising Labor Day for unions in several decades

This is an unusually promising Labor Day for American unions — maybe the most hopeful for many decades — for several reasons. 

First, the annual Gallup poll released last week showed a 71 percent public approval rate for unions – the highest level since 1965. The sky-high approval rate is even more remarkable given the organizational weakness of organized labor. Unions currently represent just 10.3 percent of the American workforce.

Second, there’s a mini-organizing wave — driven by worker-organizers, not full-time union officials — taking place across the low-wage service sector. Most notably, workers at 235 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since Starbucks Workers United historic first victories in Buffalo, N.Y., last December; the independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU) won at a Staten Island warehouse with 8000 workers in April; Apple retail store workers in Towson, Md., formed the company’s first union in June, as did Trader Joe’s workers in Massachusetts and Minneapolis, REI workers in New York City and Berkeley, and  Chipotle workers in Lansing, Mich. There hasn’t been this much excitement around labor activism in low-wage, non-union sectors of the economy for decades.

Third, the number of workers — often young, progressive, college-educated working-class — talking union continues to grow by the week: cultural (museum and gallery) workers, non-profit workers, digital media workers, video game designers and even Facebook workers.

But the news isn’t all positive. There’s a huge disconnect between the energy and enthusiasm for union among young workers versus national union membership trends. Because of weak laws and strong employer opposition, national union membership rates have been falling for decades. Private sector union density was just 6.1 percent in 2021.

Moreover, when you think about what it would take to bring about union revival, and consider all the factors that have contributed to union decline — globalization, automation, new employment forms such as gig work, deregulation, non-union domestic competition, changes in the structure of corporate governance and so on — meaningful revival seems virtually impossible. But the current moment offers some hope.

Grassroots Campaigns Key to Sparking Organizing and winning Labor Law Reform 

I have long believed that the current wave of “self-organization” is the only possible way that meaningful union revival could happen in the United States. The Starbucks and Amazon union campaigns have excited young workers and made them believe that organizing is possible, even in the face of ferocious union busting by the wealthiest corporations. 

Moreover, this kind of grassroots organizing is the only way we’re likely to gain stronger labor laws. Survey evidence shows that almost half of non-union workers would like to have union representation but strong employer opposition and weak legal protection for the right to choose a union means they are unlikely to get it. But we’ll never get labor law reform unless the public understands the issues, cares about them, and feels it has a stake in the outcome.  

Consider the campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act, the failed effort to strengthen the right to choose a union during the early days of the Obama administration. I left my academic job at the London School of Economics and took a position as research director at the University of California Berkeley Labor Center at that time in large part because I believed it possible that unions could win labor law reform. But, on reflection, EFCA likely never stood a chance: it was a quiescent period in union organizing, no one was paying attention to the issue — one could never meet anyone who had even heard of EFCA unless they had a professional interest — and President Obama didn’t lift a finger to help it; but his lack of meaningful action was inevitable given the first two issues.

Today, in contrast, we have dynamic organizing campaigns at Starbucks, Amazon and several others; many more people are paying attention to union issues than has been true for decades — in large part because of the incredible traditional and social media coverage generated by those campaigns — and we have a White House whose occupant wants to be remembered as the “most pro-union President in history.” Those factors won’t be enough to win labor law reform, but without them, unions don’t stand a chance: their allies will never be able to force labor reform through the Senate while no one is looking, so to speak, because the corporate lobby will always be stronger than the union lobby and will always have sufficient votes to block it.   

Something’s Happening Here…. 

We don’t know what the legacy of the current union moment will be; it could yet all go up in a puff of smoke, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not something historic happening. As a result of the inspirational campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon, unions have overcome the parochialism that has always defined them, even in their heyday, and entered the media mainstream. Union issues have become a matter of general interest. Throughout the country young workers are excited about labor activism — and much of this grassroots activism among younger workers is happening despite the national labor movement, not because of it. The organizing dynamism is coming from below, not above.  

Starbucks Union is the Best Model Yet for Union Revival 

Starbucks Workers United provides the best model for how the established labor movement can interact with the young, insurgents who want to organize in the low-wage service sector and beyond; it has also developed a replicable model that has resulted in 235 unionized stores at a ferociously anti-union superstar corporation — a unique achievement in the history of U.S unions. 

The best hope for any meaningful union revival in the United States is that next Labor Day we have dozens more Starbucks Workers United style of organizing campaigns. 

John Logan is professor and director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University.