Union Approval Rating Hits 56-Year High
Date Posted: September 30, 2021
Posted In: News, Workforce,
From St. Louis/Southern Illinois Labor Tribune: Sixty-eight percent of Americans approve of Labor unions – a 56-year high – according to the latest Gallup poll.
Gallup has measured the public’s rating of Labor unions periodically since 1936 and annually since 2001, and more Americans have expressed approval than disapproval in every reading.
“It’s a great point of pride that the rest of the country so strongly supports what we in Organized Labor have always known,” said Jake Hummel, president of the Missouri AFL-CIO: “Unions advocate on behalf of all workers to provide essential workplace protections and living wages.”
According to Gallup’s annual Work and Education poll conducted Aug. 2-17, 2021:
- 68 percent approve of Labor unions, the highest since 1965.
- 90 percent of Democrats approve of unions.
- 47 percent of Republicans approve of unions.
- Labor union membership remains steady at nine percent of U.S. adults.
Union membership has been on the decline for decades, from 20.1 percent of the workforce in 1983 to 10.3 percent in 2019. But that may be about to change.
In 2018, researchers at MIT found that approximately 48 percent of nonunion workers would join a union if they could — representing some 58 million workers and nearly half of the nonunion workforce.
As wealth inequality continues to rise and workers have recognized the very real risks they’re asked to take to their health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, more are seeing unions as their best and maybe only, chance to improve their wages, benefits and work conditions.