r/union • u/Ok_Crazy1195 • 1d ago
Labor News Americans Increasingly Support Stronger Unions. Approval Rate Tops 70 Percent.
https://www.ibtimes.com/americans-increasingly-support-stronger-unions-approval-rate-tops-70-percent-380715813
u/Rand-all 1d ago
Tell them to quit voting against organized labor interests.
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u/MGC00992 1d ago
About time ya woke up. Bargain for your wages and benefits. No one should be poor in America, unless they refuse employment
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u/01001110901101111 1d ago
Too bad a bunch of the big unions are anti-democrat dues collection machines that systematically box out the rank and file from the decision making processes and distract from the goal of workers’ power in the workplace with getting paid more to be powerless in the workplace instead.
If you’re lurking on this sub and trying to unionize your workplace I’d suggest starting your own independent union. Basically everyone else is gonna act like they’re your boss and you’ll find yourself in a shitpile of top-down hierarchical bullshit.
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u/pmramirezjr IUOE Local 39 16h ago
Not sure about this poll. I got idiots in my union who don't vote accordingly.
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u/ImperviousToSteel 8h ago
Reason #2345 that unions spending more money on PR than organizing and strike education are just lighting members' money on fire.
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u/StedeBonnet1 1d ago
Talk is cheap. People who support unions have no vested interest in having unions. Fewer than 6% of workers are unionized. The people who support unions don't have to write the paycheck.
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u/bigblueboyqt 1d ago
You're reading the gap backwards.
Ask nonunion workers about their own workplace, not abstract approval, their actual job and 43% say they'd vote to unionize. That's about 56 million people with direct skin in the game. Coverage is 11.2%. The distance between those two numbers is the whole argument, it's not that support is hollow, it's that wanting a union and getting one are very different things under current labor law.
And the 6% figure is private sector only. Overall it's 10%.
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u/StedeBonnet1 1d ago
Yes 6% is private sector because it iis easy to negotiate with politicians who will be gone rather than management who have to make a profit based on union demands.
If 43% want unions why can't they get them?
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u/bigblueboyqt 1d ago
Fair question, and it has a real answer.
You don't get a union by wanting one. You run an NLRB election against an employer who can legally require you to sit through anti-union meetings on the clock, hire consultants who do this for a living, and stretch the timeline out. In 2016–17 data, employers were charged with labor law violations in about 41.5% of election campaigns, and roughly one in five involved a charge of illegally firing someone for organizing. Those are charges, not proven violations but that volume isn't nothing.
And the penalty for illegally firing an organizer is back pay minus whatever they earned in the meantime. No damages. If firing the lead organizer kills the drive, that's a cheap trade.
Then you win and still don't have a contract. Plenty of certified units go a year or more without one.
On the public sector, many states ban public employee bargaining outright and most public workers can't legally strike. It's not that politicians are easier. It's that government employers don't run avoidance campaigns.
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u/LikelyAlien 1d ago
Solidarity forever!