A robust majority of Individuals proceed to view labor unions in a optimistic mild, in keeping with a brand new Gallup survey launched Wednesday.
Seventy p.c of respondents mentioned they maintain a good view of unions, up barely from 67% in 2023. Solely 23% mentioned they disapprove of unions.
This 12 months’s approval score marks the second-highest in practically 60 years, topped solely by 71% in 2022.
Union favorability has risen and remained elevated after dropping across the time of the Nice Recession within the late 2000s. Their rising recognition has include an improve in union election petitions, with extra workers attempting to prepare their workplaces.
Extra staff have additionally been strolling off the job to demand higher working situations, with the variety of placing staff greater than doubling in 2023. Polling confirmed the general public largely supported the auto staff who went on strike towards Ford, Common Motors and Jeep dad or mum firm Stellantis final 12 months.
However to this point, the rise in recognition of unions has not translated into a much bigger labor motion within the U.S., the place union density has been on a decadeslong decline.
Round 1 in 3 staff belonged to a union within the Nineteen Fifties, in comparison with simply 1 in 10 immediately, in keeping with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Though the uncooked variety of union members elevated by an estimated 139,000 final 12 months, union density truly fell barely as a result of the U.S. workforce had grown.)
Labor leaders have pointed to the excessive favorability rankings in Gallup’s surveys to make case for a union resurgence. Additionally they say it’s a cause unions might be pivotal within the 2024 elections, persuading members and their households to again Democratic candidates in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The biggest unions shortly got here out in assist of Vice President Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race towards former President Donald Trump in July. A number of union leaders, together with UAW President Shawn Fain, gave speeches on the Democratic Nationwide Conference this month.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, argued in a speech in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that union affect can be pivotal within the race for the White Home. The federation, which incorporates 60 unions, says that 22% of voters in Pennsylvania are both union members or retirees who’d been in unions.
“We can run up the margins where it counts, we have built an organizing machine that can mobilize on a dime, and we have built a singular trust and connection with workers, families and neighbors,” Shuler mentioned. “There is no question that the road to the White House runs through America’s union halls.”
