Young workers give US labor unions hope for the future
After decades of decline, U.S. labor unions have a new reason for hope: younger workers.
Workers in their 20s — and even in their teens — are leading ongoing efforts to unionize companies large and small, from Starbucks and REI to local cannabis dispensaries. The Alphabet Workers Union, formed last year and now representing 800 Google employees, is run by five people under 35.
Multiple polls show union approval is high — and growing — among the youngest workers. And U.S. union membership levels are even ticking upward for workers between 25 and 34, even as they decline among other age groups.
Between 2019 and 2021, the overall percentage of U.S. union members stayed flat. But the percentage of workers ages 25-34 who are union members rose from 8.8% to 9.4%, or around 68,000 workers, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Young workers say they see unions as the best way to combat wage inequality and poor working conditions. For some, personal heroes like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — a vocal labor advocate — have piqued their interest in unions. Others say the coronavirus pandemic caused them to rethink what they deserve from their jobs.
“Whatever this is isn’t working,” said Adriana Alvarez, 29, a McDonald’s employee in Chicago. “We obviously need change.”
When a union organizer first approached Alvarez in 2014, she was skeptical of his goal to raise her pay to $15 per hour. At the time, she was making $8.50 per hour and hadn’t gotten a raise in three years.
But she got involved with the Fight for $15 labor
group, organizing protests and learning about her rights. McDonald’s workers still aren’t unionized, but she says her managers are more respectful and have stopped illegal practices, like making workers reimburse the restaurant if they accidentally accept counterfeit money. She now makes $16.70 per hour.
States and courts, though, have also steadily chipped away at unions’ power.
Twenty-seven states now have “right-to-work” laws, which prohibit a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them. And last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1975 California regulation that had allowed union organizers to meet with agricultural workers on company property.
Unions last year saw some of their biggest increases among young workers in utilities, the motion picture industry and the federal government, said Hayley Brown, a research associate with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonpartisan think tank.
Brown said there are signs those numbers will
continue to rise this year under the labor-friendly Biden administration, which issued proposals this month aimed at increasing unionization rates for federal workers and contractors. In January, there were 170 petitions filed for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board; that was more than double the 83 filed in January 2021.
After two Starbucks stores in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize last year, workers at over 70 Starbucks stores in 21 states petitioned the NLRB to hold their own union elections, according to Workers United, the union organizing the effort.
Derrick Pointer, an electrical lineman in Talladega, Alabama, wasn’t convinced he should join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers when he started working for Halliburton Co. in 2015. At a previous job, his union reps weren’t responsive, he said.
But he joined to take advantage of the union’s training. Pointer now makes $42.30 per hour and has generous benefits.
The $60 he pays in union dues each month is well worth it, Pointer said.