Young leaders fuel new labor movement in Texas
Tevita Uhatafe proudly wore a Texas union cap and shirt as he marched toward New York City’s Times Square in a rally on Labor Day. Lest people forget where he had traveled from, he periodically unfurled his Tarrant County labor flag to don as a cape.
Alongside him was Chris Smalls, the organizer who led the historic Amazon warehouse union vote earlier this year, shouting chants through a megaphone. Once they arrived at their destination, Smalls passed it off to Uhatafe.
“The South is ready to organize!” Uhatafe said, labor flag in hand. “And we are inviting … any damn person who wants to unionize — come to the South!”
This wasn’t the 36-yearold’s first time rallying workers at a demonstration.
He is part of a young cohort of labor leaders and organizers emerging in Texas, fueled by a postpandemic surge in support for unions and organizing activity. Whether young workers’ enthusiasm can reverse the past downward trend in union membership remains to be seen, particularly in states highly resistant to unions such as Texas.
“There’s this really spontaneous eruption of folks,” said Rick Levy, president of the Texas AFL-CIO. Much of the burst is being fueled by people in their 20s and 30s, he added.
Uhatafe said he first realized the value of unions in 2019. As a fleet service clerk for American Airlines, he is part of the Transport Workers Union, which joined General Motors employees in Arlington on a strike.
He remembers speaking with workers while picketing outside their plant in the evenings. “I can’t feel my hands,” he recalls one telling him about the toll building auto parts took on her body. After hearing story after story about what people experienced — reasons they were fighting for better job security and higher wages — it struck him how important it was to stand alongside them.
“You should be there physically so these people know they’re not doing this alone, that somebody does care,” he said. “These people are risking a lot to do this.”
Uhatafe has developed a national reputation for showing up to support people fighting for better job conditions around the country.
Whether it be Nabisco workers in Chicago and Portland, Ore., farmworkers in San Francisco or steelworkers in Beaumont, Uhatafe opens up his schedule and takes advantage of his airline benefits to be there with them.
“I bring these stories back to Texas,” Uhatafe said about his experiences across the country. “I want people to know that we can be a part of this, too.”
Young Texan leaders
Support for unions has reached its highest point in decades, according to a recent Gallup poll. The South is no exception: 66 percent of people in the region support unions, a percentage that tops national approval from just two years ago.
National support among workers ages 18-24, in particular, has skyrocketed: 72 percent now approve of unions, according to a recent White House report.
Texas isn’t immune to the shift. In the state, more petitions have been filed to form unions this year than all of 2021, National Labor Relations Board data shows. Successful union drives have taken place in workplaces ranging from Starbucks shops to a hospital in Austin and newsrooms such as the Austin American-Statesman and The Dallas Morning News.
Unclear future
Whether majority support for unions will translate into a long-term increase in their membership is unclear.
Unions have historically put upward pressure on wages and job security for workers, said Chad Pearson, a labor historian at the University of North Texas, and the benefits they provide are still evident today: Private and public union workers, on average, receive better pay and benefits than their nonunion counterparts, and unions help raise the wages of women workers and workers of color in particular, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Despite the advantages, union membership has steadily declined since the 1950s, when it peaked at 35 percent in the country and more than 10 percent in Texas. Today, only 1 in 10 workers in the U.S. is a union member. In Texas, the density is 3.8 percent.
Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Texas Association of Business, said a healthy job market explains Texas’ low union density rather than repression of the organizations.
“Happy workers, satisfied workers, workers with opportunities and a chance to get ahead with their employer” are the main reasons unions have never taken off in the state, he said, adding that a better path to improved job conditions is to communicate directly with management rather than going through unions, which he said can use funds for activities workers aren’t comfortable with.
A recent report by Oxfam America, a nonprofit that aims to end poverty, ranked Texas as one of the least hospitable in the country for workers when taking wages, benefits and organizing rights into account.