Economic Policy Institute: Workers are winning union elections, but getting a first contract can take years
Thanks to Jeff Wiggins for sending us this.
By Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and John Schmitt
Today is International Workers’ Day, also known as May Day, a day to commemorate the struggles and achievements of workers and the labor movement around the globe. The year that just ended was remarkable for the U.S. labor movement: Gallup found that 71% of polling respondents “approve of” labor unions, the highest share since 1965.
Despite substantial obstacles to union organizing posed by U.S. labor law, these pro-union sentiments helped to power an extension of union representation to 200,000 additional workers in 2022. The National Labor Relations Board reported a 53% increase in petitions for union representation elections relative to just a year earlier, a trend that has continued into the first six months of fiscal year 2023. And since December 2021, workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York and at more than 300 Starbucks stores across the country have led high-profile—and successful—campaigns to organize their workplaces.