Unions in the United States have suffered a significant decline since the early 1980s. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 20% of workers belonged to a union in 1983 (the first year for which data is available). By 2022, that number had been cut in half.
The decline – which many experts attribute to pro-employer policy changes, an increase in right-to-work laws that weaken the organizing and collective bargaining power of employees, and a trend towards outsourcing – has left USA with one of the lowest union densities among major economies.
But even with the reduction in membership, worker support for unions has increased.
In August 2022, Gallup posted the highest levels of union support since the 1960s, 71% of Americans approve of unions, and one in 10 non-union workers say they are “extremely interested” in joining one.
High-profile union initiatives have dominated the headlines: In recent years, workers at Amazon, Starbucks and several universities have organized.
The US Screenwriters and Actors Union continues to strike for demands for salary and benefit increases, as well as for greater protection against the development of Artificial Intelligence.
And among those on the front lines are the younger workers who are leading the renewed push for unions. Generation Z (born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s) is, according to the Center for American Progress, “the most pro-union generation in existence today.”
“I think there is a better understanding that if you have a job, you need a union,” says Jaz Brisack. The 26-year-old was one of the first leaders of the union fights at Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, in 2021.
Context
Gen Z’s involvement in and support for organized unions makes sense when you consider the context of their experience, says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research and professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, EE. .UU.
“First of all, they grew up hearing that they were going to be better off than their parents,” he says. “The fact is that they had a hard time finding work, and the jobs they found weren’t as good as their parents’.”
“They and the generation that followed them are saddled with college debt. They are looking at a world where they have to think about whether or not to have children because of climate change.”
“They are concerned about broader social issues like reproductive rights or gun control, and they plan to hold the government and employers accountable for these issues,” he adds.
The practices of some companies during the pandemic, Bronfenbrenner continues, increased the enthusiasm of Gen Z workers for unions: low-income employees, service workers and those without educational degrees had difficulty obtaining personal protective equipment, medical care and paid sick leave.
Reports from the Economic Policy Institute show that, in 2020, just over 10% of workers considered “essential”, including those in the sales sector, were protected by a union contract.
In contrast, workers who were represented by a union were more likely to access internal and external mechanisms to defend themselves on health and safety issues.
“Many of these workers were on the front lines,” he says. “When they asked for something as simple as personal protective equipment or time off to care for their families, or not go to work when they were sick, their employers told them no. The workers are willing to put up with a lot, but putting their lives and their families at risk is too much, and I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Brisack says their job at Starbucks — amid the pandemic-related job shortage — made them feel “no one was coming to save us.” That inspired them to try to find their own solutions, and was key to their attempts to organize, which involved many Gen Zers and other supporters of the cause.
Brisack now believes in the power of unions to create equality in what he sees as an unfair power structure. “I think people are looking back and seeing that what really created a better standard of living in the past was union density, and they are more open to the idea of organizing.”
Generation Z vs the world
The baby boomers had a lot going for them, Bronfenbrenner says, as the generation became “very politically involved with civil rights, the women’s movement and the antiwar movement.”
But towards the end of the 1970s, “the situation changed dramatically and the focus became more on taking care of oneself and making money.”
Researchers generally consider Generation X to be significantly more independent and self-sufficient; and millennials, according to empirical research, are the most individualistic generation of all. Generation Z, on the other hand, seems to be the collective generation.
A Stanford University research project found that the group born between the mid-1990s and 2010 is highly collaborative.
Brisack believes that because Gen Z feels that society has collectively let them down, many see it necessary to act as a group to make things better.
Organizing efforts driven by Gen Z also tend to be marked by this generation’s passion for social causes, and their demands reflect this, says Bronfenbrenner.
“There’s the phrase ‘organize for the common good,’” he says. And he mentions several moments that allude to this, such as the teachers’ strike in California that demanded sustainable initiatives and better care for homeless students.
“Starbucks workers were demanding that their employers take a stand on LGBTQ rights,” he adds.
But Gen Z organizers not only have new demands, they are also organizing new industries, including hourly wage jobs, that traditionally were not covered by union protection.
“When we started taking on Starbucks, a lot of people in the union world were telling us ‘this is not a good target. It’s not reasonable,” says Brisack.
“Large corporations can also launch large-scale anti-union campaigns and messages, which can be difficult for a small-scale organization to counter.”
But while many Gen Z organizers like Brisack have realistic expectations about what unionization can and cannot achieve in service industry jobs, they still believe it’s worth it.
“Obviously, we’re not going to get pensions and a lot of things that unions were able to achieve in the past in some industries, at least not without real strong union density,” he says. “But I think we can change the standard of living from ‘these are the jobs of poverty’ to being able to build a career and be long-term workers in these roles without sacrificing standard of living.”
efficient organizers
Beyond their enthusiasm for organizing, Generation Z is very good at it.
Their tactics have evolved faster than company efforts to bust unions, and Gen Z-led protests have garnered widespread public attention and support.
Organizers at news outlet Business Insider, for example, employed a robust social media campaign. Some experts say this technique led executives to recognize the union after a 13-day strike.
This innovation can offer something of a hedge against employers’ efforts to avoid unionization, Bronfenbrenner says.
“Creativity takes the employer by surprise because employees are having fun. They’re not supposed to have fun when there’s an anti-union campaign, they’re supposed to be intimidated. When unions do creative things like use memes, it turns out they defuse the climate of fear and conflict.
And Gen Z’s mastery of networking and cross-platform communication helps build widespread public support, he adds.
Data from the Pew Research Center shows that public sentiment toward corporations is increasingly negative. And people are more likely to support workers who act against them, he says, even when it causes inconvenience like a delay in the transmission of a new season of a show, or a delay in the arrival of an online order.
“There is a public that is willing to make sacrifices for workers’ rights,” says Bronfenbrenner.
Ultimately, what makes Gen Z workers in service industries and low-wage jobs great organizers, he adds, is that they’re much less affected by traditional union busting methods, because they don’t care too much about getting fired.
“These companies no longer offer them pensions or long-term promotions. They have already moved from job to job, so getting fired is not the same threat,” says Bronfenbrenner.
Change or trend?
Even in the midst of a declining rate of unionization, most Americans believe that unions are good for workers. And despite years of pro-employer legislation at the federal level, in late August the Treasury Department released a report showing that unions were good for the economy.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote that unionization “can help reverse the sharp rise in inequality we have seen in recent decades by promoting growth throughout the economy.”
It remains to be seen whether recent efforts to organize will translate into systemic level changes or a return to the kind of union density the US has seen in the last century.
Brisack believes unionization in high-turnover service industries creates momentum.
“People may move from one job to another, partly because it’s a very exhausting and exploitative industry, but people will take the union principles with them,” he says.
“Once you’ve been through a union campaign, it’s much harder to accept exploitation or unfair conditions or not having a voice in future workplaces.”
Bronfenbrenner says there may be important developments in the works.
There has been a changing of the guard at the National Labor Relations Board, the independent federal agency that offers protection to private sector employees, he says, and those who run the agency, “are responding to their work in a very different way, and they are they are making decisions that facilitate the organization.”
But these positions are appointed by the president, with the consent of the Senate, Bronfenbrenner adds.
“All this can change with a new government and a new Congress. The question is, can this new momentum overcome this? Will these young people be motivated to make sure change happens beyond their workplace? Will they be discouraged if change is not happening fast enough?
*This article was published on BBC Worklife. Click here to read the original version in English.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/clk1479r29eo, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-08 00:00:09
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