Abstract
American workers are currently engaged in an upsurge in collective actions aimed at achieving a stronger voice and representation at work; this desire for increased voice at work is also evident in survey data. However, union organizing drives in the United States typically meet with strong employer resistance, and such resistance reduces the likelihood that the organizing effort will be successful. In addition to unions, a broad array of other efforts has been initiated to strengthen worker voice and representation. The authors discuss these efforts, including worker centers, and observe that there is no “one size fits all” approach to contemporary worker organizing.
American workers are engaged in a major upsurge in union organizing, strikes, and other forms of collective action to address their pent-up demand for achieving a stronger voice, power, and representation at work. Given the significance of these developments, a group of us has created a multi-university group, the Worker Empowerment Research Network, to study the approaches workers are taking to address their demands and to generate broad-based discussions of the implications of these developments for research, practice, and public policy. This article summarizes the first product of our efforts, a “Landscape Review” of current worker organizing and collective actions (Kochan et al., 2022). We end our summary with a critical question for further research and discussion: Will these developments be a temporary phenomenon, or a historic inflection point in the trajectory of US labor-management relations?
US Workers’ Voice and Representation Gaps
Since the passage of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), it has been the policy of the United States to support collective bargaining through unions that have been chosen by workers as their primary vehicle for gaining a voice in the determination and day-to-day administration of wages, hours, and working conditions. In the decade following passage of the NLRA, union membership grew substantially, reaching approximately one-third of the workforce in the mid-1940s. Private-sector union membership subsequently declined slowly through the 1960s and 1970s, and has fallen precipitously since 1980. By 2021, it was down to 6.1% in the private sector (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022).
One of the most important achievements of collective bargaining in the decades following World War II was producing agreements that helped reduce income inequality and shared the gains in productivity between workers and employers. As Figure 1 illustrates, the tandem upward movement in compensation and productivity ended around 1980. Wage growth for the average worker has not recovered since then. There is now widespread recognition that the decline in unions and their bargaining power is one of the causes of subsequent growth in income inequality (Farber et al., 2021) and in the decline in the share of national income going to workers (Stansbury and Summers, 2020).
Growth in pay and productivity.
Does the American public still support the right of workers to join a union, and are American workers still interested in gaining economic power and a voice through unions and collective bargaining, or via other means? The answer is yes. An August 2022 opinion poll by the Gallup organization reported that 71% of Americans approve of unions, a figure higher than at any time since 1965 (McCarthy, 2022). Moreover, a 2017 national survey of the workforce found that 48% of nonunion respondents would vote for a union if an election was held at their workplace, up from about one-third of the nonunion workforce in comparable surveys from the 1970s and 1990s (Kochan et al., 2019). This latent demand for unions is even higher for nonwhite, low-income, and less-educated workers.
A follow-up survey exploring what forms of representation workers want found that workers continue to endorse having collective bargaining, either at the employer level or industry wide. They also express strong support for organizations that provide an array of labor market services (e.g., training, unemployment assistance, or retirement and health programs) and for organizations that would provide a voice in workplace processes—for example, by advising management on ways to improve how work is done via workplace-level advisory councils or having workers represented on company boards of directors. Moreover, these are viewed by workers as complementary, not competing, alternatives. Respondents expressed the highest levels of interest in organizations that would provide some mix of bargaining, voice in organizational processes and structures, and delivery of labor market or legal services (Hertel-Fernandez et al., 2022).
The 2017 survey also asked about the issues that workers believe they ought to have a voice in at work and the amount of voice they actually experience. The difference between the experienced and expected influence reported was termed the “voice gap.” As shown in Figure 2, a majority of the workforce reports a substantial voice gap on a number of issues from fringe benefits and compensation to respect. The voice and representation gaps are interrelated: The size of the voice gap is a strong predictor of the interest workers expressed in joining a union (Kochan et al., 2019).
The voice gap.
Union Organizing for Collective Bargaining
How well does the reality on the ground reflect the NLRA's intent that workers should be able to decide whether to form a union of their choosing without interference from employers? Union organizing drives typically meet with strong employer resistance, and this resistance reduces the likelihood that the organizing effort will be successful.
In a new study, Bronfenbrenner (2022) found that employer anti-union campaigns in the United States have become more sophisticated. The study found that, when US workers seek to organize a union, a majority of employers engage in coercive, retaliatory tactics such as threats of plant closure and outsourcing, interrogation, surveillance, discharge, bribes, discipline harassment, promises of improvement, and alteration of benefits. Use of such tactics by employers is associated with union win rates 10% to 40% lower than in unionization campaigns where they are not used. An earlier study using NLRB data from 1999 to 2004 found that unions using the NLRB election process were successful in achieving a collective bargaining agreement in 1 year in <10% of cases where the employer resisted the organizing effort to the point that an unfair labor practice was filed (Ferguson, 2008).
Figure 3 illustrates, that, even after winning an election, only 35% of unions achieve a first contract within 1 year, and approximately one-third of new bargaining units still do not have a contract more than 3 years after the election was won. In response to continued aggressive employer campaigns, unions are shifting their organizing away from the traditional sectors of manufacturing, construction and transportation, to consumer-facing US-based firms in service, retail, and communications where customers and the community can exert more leverage to restrain anti-union campaigns (Bronfenbrenner, 2022). Since unions are now often selecting “softer targets” and avoiding some of the most anti-union employers, the observed effects of employer opposition likely underestimate its true impact.
First contract rates. Source: Bronfenbrenner, 2022 .
Contemporary union organizing drives in the United States typically reach only a small fraction (<0.1%) of the nonunion private sector workforce per year. Recently, however, there has been a significant upsurge in union organizing activities. In July 2022, the NLRB reported that union representation petitions increased 58% from October 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022—up to 1,892, from 1,197 during the first 9 months of NLRB fiscal year (FY) 2021. By the end of May, FY2022 petitions outstripped the total number of petitions filed by unions in all of FY2021. With a win rate of 77% in the first 6 months of 2022 (see Figure 4, below), unions are winning more elections than they have in any year since 2000. Recent organizing growth has occurred across a variety of industries, with headline campaigns in giant retail firms that were previously thought to be unorganizable, such as Amazon, Chipotle, Starbucks, Trader Joe's, REI, and Apple (Brooks, 2022; Mola, 2022).
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election statistics for selected years, 2011–2022. Source: NLRB, 2022, 2016, and 2011 .
Most of the units that unions organize are small and, in cases of multi-establishment employers, usually limited to one establishment at a time. Sometimes, however, organizing efforts that gain visibility in one worksite spur similar actions in others. Starbucks is the most visible current example, as illustrated in Figure 5. From the initial filing for a union election in Buffalo, New York, close to 300 other stores, covering over 8,000 workers, have filed for elections, and more than 6,000 of those workers, in over 200 stores, have unionized. Now they are experiencing the challenge of negotiating a first contract with an employer that continues to resist their efforts.
Cumulative number of workers at Starbucks unionized up to September 2022. Source: Authors’ analysis of NLRB data.
Because union organizing under the NLRA is a difficult, litigious, expensive, and often long process, many unions have sought to achieve voluntary recognition from employers by demonstrating that a majority of workers have signed authorization cards designating the union as their representative, or through card check certification, where the employer and the union agree to a date when majority status on authorization cards will be determined and the union certified if it has a majority. Several studies suggest that more private-sector workers are now organized in such ways than through the NLRB election process (Brudney, 2004; Bronfenbrenner, 2009).
While organizing a union usually continues to meet strong resistance from employers, the recent surge in highly visible organizing activity, particularly at high-profile companies like Starbucks and Amazon, and firms in digital media, may be a harbinger that workers do not see the challenges they face in organizing as insurmountable. Whether unions that have obtained certification are able to reach first contracts, however, remains an open question.
Strikes and Work Stoppages
Historically, a union's most important source of power in collective bargaining has been the threat of a strike. From the mid-1950s to 1979, strikes were positively related to the size of the wage increase reached in bargaining. However, after 1980, the relationship between strikes and wage increases declined to zero or turned negative (Kochan and Kimball, 2019).
After decades of declining strike activity (Rosenfeld, 2006; Godard, 2011), a recent wave of worker unrest may be serving as a more potent source of power than many of the strikes in recent decades. A variety of strikes by both union and nonunion workers have occurred over the past few years to protest issues such as low pay, staffing shortages, poor working conditions, and demands for union recognition. The ILR Labor Action Tracker, launched by researchers at Cornell University's ILR School to comprehensively document strike activity, demonstrates that both union and nonunion workers have recently utilized strikes to advance demands. As Figure 6 indicates, nonunion workers organized nearly one-third of all strikes in 2021, although these were shorter and involved fewer workers than strikes by union members. As Figure 7 shows, roughly the same number of strikes occurred in the South (71) as in the Northeast (70), further illustrating the expanding scope of labor activism (Kallas et al., 2022).
Union and nonunion work stoppages, 2021.
Work stoppages by region, 2021.
Strikes today often take on more of a public face than in the past. For instance, bargaining for the common good (McCartin and Sneiderman, 2019; Givan and Lang, 2020) is a strategy some teachers unions are using to engage parents and community citizens by expanding worker demands to address community needs related to high-quality public education; in recent years, this approach has been used in teacher strikes in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, West Virginia, and Kentucky (McCartin et al., 2020). Other groups use short strikes to raise attention to worker concerns rather than continuing to strike until a negotiated agreement is reached (Rhomberg, 2018; Kallas, 2023). As Figure 8 shows, workers are also using strikes to advance a diverse range of demands, including pay, racial justice, and workplace safety.
Work stoppages by demand.
In summary, use of strikes appears to be making a comeback and is being used to address a broad array of issues of concern to workers.
Worker Centers
Worker centers are community-based institutions that provide support to and organize with low-wage workers. Worker centers are not unions: They do not collectively bargain or organize workplaces for ongoing representation. They are place-based, working at the local or regional level, rather than worksite based, and their efforts tend to consist of some combination of service provision; policy and advocacy work; and organizing (Fine et al., 2018). Worker centers and the federations they are part of have achieved protections for workers through local and state policy initiatives (Fine et al., 2018; Fine et al., 2021) and also advocate for federal policy change. The majority of worker centers include as part of their work a focus on both immigration policy and worker health and safety.
The number of worker centers in the United States has steadily increased from 2000 to the present. As of 2018, there were at least 234 active worker centers; as of the end of 2021, there were at least 246. Almost half of the new worker centers since 2018 are focused on Black workers and are multisectoral.
Worker centers craft innovative ways of raising standards for workers at the margins of existing labor and employment institutions. One example is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which successfully pressured multiple national fast food and grocery chains to (a) pay a small premium on produce, which goes directly to supporting farmworkers and (b) agree only to purchase from farms that have signed the Fair Food Code of Conduct, which guarantees a range of rights to farmworkers, from water, toilets, and shade in the fields to rules against abuse and sexual harassment.
Many worker centers are small and rely overwhelmingly on funding from foundations and individual donors. Only a small fraction of their revenues comes from dues-paying workers. Whether or how worker centers could develop more self-sustaining sources of revenue is a topic of ongoing discussion.
New Organizational Forms and Strategic Innovations in Worker Organizing
In addition to unions and worker centers, a broad array of efforts has been initiated in recent years to strengthen worker voice in individual occupations, companies, and industries. For example, Coworker.org supports workers in using petitions to initiate change in company policies. Workers in some companies, such as Google and Walmart, have demanded representation on company boards of directors. Some worker groups are advocating for a seat at the table in sectoral or regional employment standards boards, such as the statewide Fast Food Council enacted into law in California in 2022.
Some of these initiatives have arisen out of frustrations with the difficulties of organizing unions. Others, such as the National Domestic Workers Alliance, are tailored to address the concerns of workers excluded from coverage under current labor law. While most of these efforts to do not seek formal collective bargaining rights, some do so after building a base of worker interest. Many of these new approaches to worker organizing use social media tools and digital platforms to reach potential participants and to demonstrate that a significant number of employees want to engage with employers on issues ranging from wages and working conditions to company values.
These new organizational forms and strategic innovations in worker organizing are growing in number and involve a wide range of workers, from employees of large high-tech companies to gig workers classified as independent contractors and low-wage service sector employees. While many of these efforts began as protests in response to specific incidents, there appears to be increasing interest in building sustainable organizations for asserting worker voices and engaging employers on an ongoing basis. As is the case with other forms of worker organizing, these efforts often face strong managerial opposition and resistance.
Bases for Organizing
The different types of worker organizing summarized above illustrate the multiple strategies occurring today and the combinations of sector, firm, and worker identities upon which the individual organizations rest. Figure 9 shows that there is no “one size fits all” approach to contemporary worker organizing (Fine et al., 2018). While organizing drives at Starbucks and Amazon follow the familiar model of organizing within a firm, groups like Fight for $15, which began by mobilizing fast-food workers, and Game Workers Unite, which works across the game industry, take a more sectoral approach. Organizations like the National Black Worker Center bring workers together around a shared identity rather than a shared employer. Some organizations use combinations of the three approaches: The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, for instance, works to improve conditions for immigrant workers in the agricultural sector. The Independent Drivers Guild advocates for workers at more than one ridesharing platform. The #AppleToo campaign involved workers at one firm sharing concerns that included identity-related issues such as allegations of discrimination and sexual harassment (Anguiano, 2021), and the National Domestic Workers Alliance has brought domestic workers together in a variety of ways, including identity, sector, and a specific firm.
Examples of intersections among alternative bases for organizing.
This diversity of organizing approaches raises important questions for research and practice: Is it likely that there will continue to be such an array of firm, sector, and identity-based organizational structures and strategies to strengthen worker voice, representation, and power going forward? And if so, how can this broad mix be accommodated in future labor law reform efforts?
A Key Question for Further Research
Both research data and the level and varieties of worker activism tell us that American workers want a greater voice at work and are taking actions to assert their interests, sometimes in ways that bear little resemblance to the forms of organizing and collective bargaining provided under legacy labor laws. But to date this has not yet resulted in major increases in the number of workers covered by a representative organization.
This raises a key question: Will the current upsurge in activism be merely a flash in the pan that dissipates in the face of strong employer opposition or a weakening labor market, or be a turning point in labor–management relations that produces sustained growth in the number and ways in which workers organize and gain a stronger voice at work? While it is too early to know, Kochan and Liebman (2022) recently identified a number of factors that will likely be pivotal in determining the answer to this question. They include:
Whether or not current worker activism continues to grow and intensify—and results in collective bargaining agreements or other forms of ongoing representation; The degree to which established unions provide support to the new generation of labor activists and new forms of worker advocacy; The extent to which community and social justice movements and labor unions are able to mobilize groups based on their personal or social identities and to build sustainable coalitions to serve the needs of people of color, immigrants, and workers who have historically been excluded from coverage under federal labor law; Whether or not the business community can be engaged in constructive conversations about developing a more neutral approach to worker organizing (such as that recently announced by Microsoft); And, finally, the degree to which current labor laws can be updated and improved to meet the needs of the 21st century workforce and economy.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this research was provided by the Ford Foundation, the WorkRise network at the Urban Institute, the Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation and the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.
