Will Young, Well‐Educated Workers Lead aUnion Revival?
pa href=https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson hreflang=undWalter Olson/a
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p“After decades of declining union membership, organized labor may be on the verge of anbsp;resurgence in the U.S.” a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/briefing/union-drives-college-graduates.htmlclaimed/a the emNew York Times/em last week, echoing dozens of similar claims lately. But how solid is the case for such anbsp;union comeback, and if it happens is it likely to be broad or narrow? emThe Economist/em invited me to write anbsp;guest column on the topic, which was a href=https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/07/18/unions-are-now-a-lifestyle-choice-for-some-workers-says-walter-olsonpublished last week/a./p
pspanspanI begin with figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which found the share of American workers belonging to unions fell last year, not rose, from 10.8% to 10.3%, back to its 2019 share and far below 1983’s 20.1% or the all time peak of 34.8% in 1954. Overall, union membership in the United States fell last year by 241,000 to 14 million. /span/span/p
pspanspanHow can this be so when we keep reading stories about organizing drives at high‐profile workplaces? Unions have lately signed up workers at media outlets like emVox/em, emBuzzFeed/em, /span/spanspanemNew York /emmagazineem /em/spanspanspanand the /span/spanspanemNew Yorker/em/spanspanspan, as well as at well‐known advocacy and arts /span/spanspanspannonprofits./span/span/p
pspanspanWhat’s going on here, Inbsp;argue, may owe more to culture than to questions of pay and promotion. Sectors hit lately with union ferment tend to have youthful, well‐educated and aspirational workforces. “Many of these jobs attract anbsp;generation whose members often have strong opinions on social issues, and perhaps see the workplace as more than just the vehicle for anbsp;paycheck.” After years of looking for anbsp;breakthrough in fast‐food organizing, unions found it not at, say, Kentucky Fried Chicken but at Starbucks. /span/span/p
pRelatedly, the emNew York Times/em in its a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/briefing/union-drives-college-graduates.htmlinterview/a with labor reporter Noam Scheiber notes that “college‐educated workers have been heavily involved” in recent organizing drives, often “people with radical politics taking jobs with the explicit intention of organizing workers.” Scheiber’s example is anbsp;Rhodes Scholar who “wore anbsp;Karl Marx sweatshirt at Oxford”; back stateside she proceeded to take anbsp;job as anbsp;barista at anbsp;Buffalo Starbucks, successfully organizing fellow workers there and then reaching out to other outlets of the same chain. (The campus‐radical‐to‐union‐star pipeline, to be sure, is a href=https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2010/0910early.htmlhardly/a a href=https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Wilhelm-once-a-campus-star-now-a-constant-thorn-11688494.phpnew/a.)/p
pThe column, which is paywalled, tackles many other angles of the subject, from public opinion to the role of government worker unions. The takeaway: unions are getting anbsp;boost of sorts from being seen as vehicles for social justice, but anbsp;campaigning view of social justice is not anbsp;majority taste, even among the young and mobile. “spanspanThere’s anbsp;reason organizers report more success among staff at national environmental organizations than among, say, drywall installers, anbsp;sector employing 140,000.”/span/span/p