Americans view labor unions more favorably than they have in decades, and the recent shift in support seems to be yielding results. The private sector unionization rate was just 6.1 percent in 2021, and Union membership in the private sector has been declining for decades. However, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reported that for the first six months of Fiscal Year 2022 (October 1, 2021 – March 31, 2022), labor unions filed 57 percent more representation petitions than they did during the same period a year earlier. It also seems that just about every day we are seeing a headline about a labor union organizing employees at a national company with a well-recognized brand, including Apple, Starbucks, and Amazon. This increase comes on the heels of a Gallup poll of Americans’ approval of Labor Unions, which establishes that the percentage of Americans who view labor unions favorably has gone from just 48 percent in 2009 to 68 percent in 2021. The last time this many Americans viewed unions positively was 1965 and union membership rate in the United States was near its all-time high then.
Help from the White House & Legislators
President Biden has promised to be the most pro-union President, and, within the first two months of his presidency, advocated for the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021, which would make a number of union-friendly changes to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).[1] Two of...
President Lee Jae Myung called Tuesday for a firm government response to the spread of false information about eggs imported from Brazil. During a closed-door session of a Cabinet meeting at Cheon...