Labor union approval is holding steady, but membership is low | Insight
By Nikki Kallio
A recent Gallup poll shows the overall U.S. approval rating for labor unions at 68% — a level that’s been holding steady for the past five years and has not been seen since the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The Gallup survey also shows disparity in approval among political parties — about 90% for Democrats, 60% for Independents, and 41% for Republicans. All parties, however, have shown an increase in approval ratings compared with 2016 levels (though Republican approval reached a high of 56% in 2022 and has since fallen).
Kevin Quinn, dean of the Schneider School of Business & Economics at St. Norbert College, says the uptick in approval for labor unions can be attributed to several contributing factors.
“I think what’s really driving this recently is a sense among a lot of people that the middle class is falling behind,” Quinn says. That sentiment is particularly true among Democrats and young people, he says. “Gen Z is not necessarily buying into the idea of the economy as we understand it — the way that previous generations did.”
Older generations like boomers and Gen X grew up with the idea that the income they made would be enough to raise your family and to buy a good car and a house. “I think a lot of the Gen Zs are thinking that’s out of reach,” Quinn says.
As inflation has affected basic living expenses and incomes haven’t kept up with prices, there’s some truth to that, he says. Additionally, many believe their resumes may have been rejected by AI and generally feel that corporations have more clout than they should. “So the tick up in union support is not really that surprising to me,” Quinn says. “They look at unions as a way to counterbalance corporate influence over politics and policy.”
Additionally, COVID shifted the way we look at work-life balance. “I think a lot of people thought, you know, ‘Why am I working so hard?’ And it really was a reset again, especially among younger people … in a way that maybe some of us with grayer hair didn’t question some years ago.”
Allen Huffcutt, UW‑Green Bay Hendrickson Professor of Business, agrees that the positive sentiment for unions may be growing in part because of inflation. Additionally, workers notice the disparity between the salaries of company leaders and themselves.
“If you look at the salaries of CEOs over the last 20 or 30 years, their salaries compared to the average worker have just skyrocketed 10 times, along with the top staff,” Huffcutt says. “Average workers are seeing these CEOs make, you know, $30 million.” Meanwhile, the workers are making $20 per hour and wondering, “Where’s my share?” he says.
Unions historically
Both professors pointed out that while sentiment toward unions is relatively high, membership has actually been declining. Statista shows that union membership nationwide has been on a steady decline since 1983, reaching an all-time low in 2024, dropping from 20% to less than 10%, Huffcutt says.
Quinn says in Wisconsin in the late 1980s, about 21% of the workers were union members; now that number is about 6.4%, dropping significantly in particular during the Great Recession years, which hit manufacturing hard.
“I also think that there was a sense among some workers that the unions weren’t representing them as well as they could have,” Quinn says. “There were some scandals in the auto workers unions, if you remember that a little while ago, with the leaders living high off the hog at the expense of union dues. But I think that’s beginning to turn around with a general sense that workers’ rights have been underrepresented.”
Starting in the 19th century, Wisconsin was at the forefront of the labor movement that led to today’s standard eight-hour workday, Quinn says. “The Industrial Revolution was really all about economies of scale, right? That the larger you could get, the more equipment you could buy, the cheaper you could make stuff. And there was a sense that workers were very disposable.”
The first unions in Wisconsin were focused on working conditions, and workers are now honing in on flexibility — working from home, working a shorter week. “I think there’s some things that are beginning to resonate that sound very much like 150 years ago,” Quinn says.
Unions today
Quinn says the Great Recession and the pandemic impacted union sentiment during the past couple of decades. Now, influencing factors have shifted. People are expecting a recession, for one thing, and investment is down. Sentiment toward globalization has fallen, he says. “And I think that as people feel more stressed economically, they will look more at unions as a possibility that will help them personally,” Quinn says.
Huffcutt says factors that could lead to greater unionization include increased tariffs, reduced immigration and declining birth rates — which affect the number of available workers.
Factors that can lead to declining union membership include growing automation and right-to-work states (Wisconsin is one), in which workers are not required to join a union to work at a place where unions are present.
Another factor is a reliance on foreign manufacturing. “It’s always a little bit of cat and mouse, because the more the unions ask for, the more financially companies are going to look at moving to other countries where the labor rates are so much lower,” Huffcutt says.
Examples of recent high-profile union wins have included:
- Amazon drivers went on strike at seven delivery hubs before Christmas last year, seeking higher wages, benefits and better working conditions.
- Boeing workers ratified a new contract in November 2024, with a 43.65% compounded wage increase and other benefits.
- In April 2024, workers at a Chattanooga Volkswagen plant voted to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, a significant victory for the UAW’s push to organize foreign-owned automakers in the South. In early October, those workers were at a stalemate in negotiating their contract with the company.
- Starbucks baristas formed the Starbucks Workers United in 2021, which now includes more than 600 stores.
With the exception of Starbucks, these union wins have largely happened with workers who were already a part of a union, Huffcutt points out. “So despite the hype, the number of places where unions are coming in new is not big.”
Unions in the future
Still, as with any type of moment, there’s a contagion to success, Quinn says. “If you’re a worker, and you start to see other successful union organizing activities going on, you become union-curious, I think.”
Young people are comparing a market-based economy with an idealized version containing elements like universal basic income.
“I think that the conversation about what an economy should do and who it should do it for will be increasingly held between the millennials, the Gen Zs, and then the Alphas after that,” Quinn says. “So it’s not a surprise that people are beginning to think about the trends of recent decades and questioning whether or not that path is really the one we should be on.”
Source: Getting organized Labor union approval is holding steady, but membership is low