Recessions Bad News for Unions

by Leigh Graham · 2009-09-08 07:00:00 UTC
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I find this depressingly curious:

"for every point's worth of increase in the unemployment rate, approval of labor unions goes down by 2.6 points."  The inestimable Nate Silver leaves us alone to stew over these results from Gallup, which find that support for organized labor in the US has fallen below 50% for the first time.  Worse, respondents clearly think unions are on the decline.

There's a lot of issues I support that sometimes leave me feeling like an out-of-touch academic or hippie, and organized labor is one of them.  But I am genuinely at a loss for what people think is a better solution for worker empowerment and protection.  I agree with those who eschew some of the existing unions and their problematic history (to put it mildly): putting whites before interracial solidarity, putting specific unions before cross-sector solidarity.  But the fundamental value of collective bargaining, of strength in organized workers, seems sacrosanct to me. Union members earn one-third to one-half more than their non-union counterparts.  I wonder how many respondents know that.

The results suggest that people believe unions have more power than they do, and that the decline of organized labor is a reinforcing trend.  If you scroll down to the bottom of these Gallup results, you'll see how few people have a union member living at home, yet more than 4 in 10 believe unions have too much political influence.  It must have been the immediate passage of the Employee Free Choice Act under President Obama that has shifted the tide against them.

Wait a minute...!

We need to shift public opinion on unions, especially as they continue to enroll more women and men of color.  (The decline of white union membership is surely influencing these Gallup results.)  The future of organized labor, like the future of our country, is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic one.   We cannot abandon our commitment to worker protections and worker empowerment just because it no longer serves white men.

Why do you think public support for unions has declined?

Leigh Graham
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