Union curious: Support for unions grows, membership numbers decline

Union membership across the U.S. continues to decline, despite growing public support for unions and waning opposition. The key to reversing this trend may rest with those who are "union curious."

A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute, "The Rise of the Union Curious," defines the “union curious” as workers who report being interested in unions, but unsure whether they would vote for union representation. 

And while worker resistance to unions has declined, it hasn’t necessarily translated into greater support.

“What we find is that over time, particularly in the last five to 10 years, the proportion of workers who say ‘no, I will not vote for the union’ has gone down pretty substantially and dramatically,” said John Ahlquist, professor of political economy at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and co-author of the report. 

“But that hasn't been reflected in a huge increase in the workers who say, ‘yes, I will vote for the union,’” he continued. “What we've seen is this big increase in the workers who say, ‘I don't know,’ or ‘I'm not sure,’ that's kind of the motivation of the report.”

The ranks of the “union curious” are large and growing, the report states, and their interest is seen as crucial in determining whether the current surge in union interest will translate into lasting benefits for the workforce.

The rise of Gen Z

The U.S. has seen a rise in activism with young workers organizing at places such as Starbucks, Amazon and university campuses in recent years. Compared to older workers, the Economic Policy Institute report found that workers 30 and under are both more supportive and more uncertain about unions.

It’s a trend that’s currently being played out in Iowa. Last year, Starbucks employees in Iowa City voted to unionize; this past June, there was an attempt to unionize Bruegger’s Bagels, and the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students (COGS) at the University of Iowa has continued making headlines for its efforts to increase wages and eliminate mandatory fees for graduate TAs and RAs.

The trend can also be traced to demographics and generational shifts in the workforce, said Jennifer Sherer, director of the State Worker Power Initiative with the Economic Policy Institute, and acting deputy director with the Economic Research and Analysis Network (EARN).

“New people who have the chance to start a job in a workplace that's already unionized are having a lot of opportunities to step into leadership positions in those unions that have already been established in Iowa,” she said.

Another trend stems from federal investments in infrastructure and clean energy transition, which is driving the demand for skilled trade workers.

“The trades are very actively recruiting new and young and increasingly diverse apprentices for their training programs, which means there's a whole new generation stepping into that career path in Iowa,” she added.

Pandemic spurred attitude change

Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said the 2020 pandemic was instrumental in shifting the perspective of many workers who may have been “on the fence” regarding unionization.

“I think that there is a different attitude and outlook towards work, and one that especially resonates a little bit differently with younger generations,” he said. Treatment of essential workers during the pandemic particularly raised some issues in the areas of pay and proper safety equipment, he added.

“‘We were told how essential we were during the pandemic, and now we're being treated as though we're expendable,’” he said, quoting a common sentiment he heard from workers.

COVID-19 was definitely a “watershed moment” for many workers, said Paul Iversen, labor educator with the University of Iowa (UI) Labor Center.

“A lot of people in general found out just how expendable employers found them," Mr. Iversen said. "There's a lot of people that were involved in the hospitality industry that were just kicked to the curb and suddenly had no work."

At the same time, there were employees working in factories across the U.S. deemed "essential" who clocked in daily at the risk of exposure, illness and death to keep production going. 

“They produced great products, and their employers made huge profits,” said Mr. Iversen. “And then when it came to negotiating contracts (in the) non-union situation, they found that the workers were not participating in the wealth that they had created for the owners,” sparking a nationwide shift in worker attitudes – particularly within the younger generations.

What prods someone to seek union membership?

Being more mission-driven, Gen Z has different expectations of the workplace than previous generations, Mr. Iversen said.

“And they have, I would say, more healthy work-life balance beliefs and they want to be respected at work,” he said. “They want to work hard and get paid well, but not be worked to death.”

Common workplace challenges —such as underpayment, unstable schedules, harassment, and a lack of voice on the job — often drive workers to consider unionization.

For Juniper Hollow, 26, it was the lack of respect and wage disparities at work that set her on the path to organizing a union.

A former Bruegger’s Bagels employee in Iowa City and Coralville, Ms. Hollow filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this past June in an attempt to seek a more equitable workplace for herself and her co-workers.

“The first thing that (employees) were saying was that it was unfair that we were being paid at different rates for the same job,” she said. Workers expressed frustration at difficulty in making ends meet and feeling disrespected at work.

Iowa Rep. Sami Scheetz, 28, a member of Teamsters Local 238, said the long hours, low wages and taxing work environment while working on the 2020 presidential campaign led him to seek union membership.

“It was just kind of like a light bulb went off for me, in terms of just having the ability to have a contract that included language that protected us as workers, (and) that when we negotiated collectively, we were able to get better pay, better benefits, (and) have more job security,” he said.

Family ties

Neither Ms. Hollow nor Mr. Scheetz had family members who belonged to unions, so their knowledge on the topic was minimal until issues at work demanded remedies.

“What we've seen is that (when) people are in unions, their attitude toward unions becomes more positive. And so if you have family members who are in a union and are talking about it, then you're more likely to support a union,” said Mr. Iversen.

Ms. Sherer noted that although Iowa has a deep-rooted union tradition, decades of anti-union campaigns have taken their toll. As a result, the generational knowledge and experience that once flourished are now becoming increasingly rare.

“We're at a point now where the younger a person is, the less likely they are to have had somebody in their family who was a union member,” she said.

“I didn't know much about unions,” admitted Ms. Hollow, speaking of her experience prior to employment at Bruegger’s. “I knew that unions were put in place to help people gain some of their rights back for safety and (issues) like that…and I know that it's been successful for a lot of people.”

“I knew they existed,” said Mr. Scheetz, of his union knowledge prior to working the 2020 presidential campaign. “I knew they represented workers. I knew about it more conceptually, like I knew they were a good thing, they helped workers.”

UI doctoral student and COGS member Greg Wickenkamp, 41,  said he did not grow up in a household friendly to unions, and his understanding was formed through the media he consumed as a child.

“My understanding was that unions [were] bad,” he said. “They're sort of like grabs for power, unjust power. They make business harder.”

It wasn’t until he began teaching middle school 13 years ago and joined the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA) that he realized their value.

“It was there that I really discovered the value of unions, their ability to sort of improve working conditions to a degree, and also find camaraderie and have some power against administrators,” he said, and when he began his graduate program at UI, “It was a no-brainer to join the union.”

The state of unions in Iowa

In 1974, the Iowa Legislature enacted Iowa Code Chapter 20, marking a pivotal moment for public sector workers. The legislation granted them some collective-bargaining rights, but stripped their ability to strike. At the time, Iowa was dealing with extensive teacher strikes at K-12 and university levels.

Fast forward to 2017, when Gov. Kim Reynolds made significant revisions to the law, capping contract lengths at two years and requiring recertification elections for public sector unions before they could begin negotiating new contracts.

To date, approximately 98% of bargaining units have been recertified. “It shows that despite attempts to undermine public sector unionization, that public sector works with their unions,” said Mr. Iversen. “And that's something that we see nationwide, that people [who] are in unions are more likely to have a positive view of unions (than) people that aren't.”

Quick stats:

• Iowa had 70,000 fewer workers represented by unions last year than in 2000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Iowa had 107,000 employees represented by unions last year, down almost 40% from 2000.
• The overall share of Iowa's employed workers represented by unions fell six percentage points during that time to 7.2%.
• 2019 saw a rebound, when 6.3% of Iowa workers, or roughly 97,000 people, were represented by unions.
• Nationally, the union membership rate of public-sector workers at 32.5% continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers at 6%.
• The highest unionization rates were found among workers in education, training, and library occupations at 32.7%, and protective service occupations, at 31.9%.
• Black workers remained more likely to be union members than white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.

Polls may not be indicative of true sentiment

The Economic Policy Institute noted a disconnect between rising union approval rates and the continued decline in union membership, raising questions about how to interpret the data on union approval, particularly in regards to the polls that Gallup conducts.

The questions about union approval tend to be generic ones, Mr. Ahlquist noted, with answers like ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘I don’t know.’

That generic line of questioning correlates with “very generic things, like your satisfaction with the state of the economy, your satisfaction with how you're being treated on the job, and how secure you feel your employment is, your satisfaction with, broadly speaking, the regulation of the economy is working,” he said.

Gallup’s polling also aggregates responses from both union members and non-members, and the Economic Policy Institute argues that this masks significant differences in union approval among different groups, such as political affiliations and union membership status.

Additionally, the question regarding general union approval does not necessarily translate into support for unionization in one's own workplace. Other surveys reveal lower support for unionization when workers are asked if they would vote for a union at their workplace, indicating a gap between general approval and actual support for unionization.

“If you're really interested in unions, you want to ask people about their interest in being a union member or working in a union job for themselves, and that's what we concentrate on in most of the report,” Mr. Ahlquist said.

Future union members and the fear of the unknown

Uncertainty keeps many workers from forming opinions about, or vocalizing support for, unions and unionizations, the Economic Policy Institute report stated, which “might arise from workers being unsure about whether unions can deliver the gains in wages and working conditions that they promise.”

This ambivalence matters because a large majority of the workplace needs to be actively supportive for a union to organize, negotiate a contract, and strike successfully, the report added.

Ms. Hollow saw some of this uncertainty at play in her own workplace with employees who were initially interested in unionization.

“Some of (the employees) were unsure because they were being told that they would have to pay dues, which we had decided early on that we wouldn't be doing – we would be an independent union without any sort of dues,” she said. “And then some of them were just anxious about getting fired for trying to unionize.”

In general, it’s the “fear of the unknown” that keeps Gen Z from taking the step to unionize, she posits.

“A lot of these people just don't have any kind of base knowledge about unions, and they see these headlines that have been coming out recently of people trying to unionize and succeeding, and I think that's helping, but it's not what people first think about when they think about unions,” she said. “They think about, ‘oh, that's the kind of thing that could get me in trouble at work,’ and I think that's really scary for a lot of people.”

She said there was initial interest in unionization from co-workers, with 12 signatures indicating support for the effort; but the campaign ultimately failed when the Coralville location closed before the union filed with the labor board, rendering the employees’ votes ineligible, and the Iowa City workers voted against the effort. 

“What it boils down to is fear,” agreed Mr. Scheetz. “(Companies) use fear as a tactic to ensure, in a lot of cases, that workers choose not to take what they see as a risk of unionizing.”

“I think it's one of the most important things that we can do for the working in middle class, in our state and our country, is to ensure that workers have a right to join a union and feel protected in doing so,” he continued, “because the data objectively shows that when workers are able to join unions, their pay, their benefit and happiness increases as a result.”

There could be alternative approaches to organizing, the Economic Policy Institute posits, such as neutrality agreements and work councils. Even if an attempt to organize fails, benefits may still arise. Ms. Hollow said her former employer began enacting changes to make employees happier, such as raises.

“Even if you don't win a union, you're still making a difference for your company and for your own livelihood,” she said.