“While the percentage of the workforce that is unionized is declining, ‘membership is growing in value,’ a Gallup report indicated.”
Why this is important: Gallup and other pollsters who periodically survey public opinion on workplace issues have all reported that the percentage of Americans who view unions favorably has reached levels unmatched since the mid-1960s. Annual Gallup surveys show union popularity among all Americans increasing from a low of 48 percent after the Great Recession of 2009 to 71 percent in 2022 (the highest since 1965) with only a slight decrease in 2023 to 67 percent. A survey recently commissioned by the AFL-CIO and conducted by ABGO reflects similarly high levels of public approval for labor unions among registered voters. However, despite high public approval, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that union membership has not seen corresponding increases, and, in fact, the percentage of all wage and salary workers who are union members continues to remain at historically low levels of 10 percent; particularly in the private sector where union membership remains stuck at 6 percent.
There are a number of possible explanations for what appears to be a disconnect between growing union approval and declining union membership rates, including the fact that recent strong growth in overall employment exceeded the increase in union membership and that 58 percent of non-union members continue to have no interest in organizing. Nonetheless, the significant improvement in public approval should not be ignored, and, in fact, there are regulatory and demographic developments that suggest employers need to be more diligent than ever.
Unions prevailed in 95 percent of representation elections involving groups of 500 or more workers in the first half of 2023. In gross numbers, unions won 662 elections during that same period – covering over 58,000 workers, the greatest first-half win total for unions in nearly 20 years. Representation petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board (Board) also significantly increased in fiscal years 2022 and 2023. These are developments that should not be ignored.
These recent union election successes were closely followed by two significant changes by the Board in the second half of 2023 to the union organizational process that will likely aid unions seeking further gains in 2024. First, the Board’s Cemex decision in August of 2023 paved the path for mandatory bargaining without the traditional imprimatur of a secret ballot employee election and, in some situations, shifted the burden from unions to employers to seek an election. Second, the Board issued new procedural rules, which went into effect on December 26, 2023, designed to reduce the time between when a petition for election is filed and when the election occurs. In short, the changes introduced by the NLRB under President Biden, the self-styled “most pro-union-president in history,” should prompt employers to immediately prepare for an increase in union organizing activity.
Finally, the public polling on union favorability demonstrated that approval of unions is very high among younger workers. AFL-CIO polling released in August 2023 indicated that 88 percent of registered voters under the age of 30 and 69 percent of voters between the ages of 30 and 50 support labor unions. Thus, the Millennial and Generation Z workers who are rapidly replacing the retiring Baby Boomers provide new opportunities for long-floundering unions to swell their dues-paying membership ranks.
Employers concerned about effectively communicating an accurate description of the consequences of union organizing need to immediately up their game to counter the demographic and regulatory developments that favor increasing union representation. Recommended steps to take in consultation with legal counsel include the training of managers to recognize and report early signs of organizing, the use of employee satisfaction surveys, regular wage and benefit market surveys, and assessing and improving management communications about your business objectives and challenges. --- Peter R. Rich
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