Posts tagged gallup
The State of the Union: Unpacking the Recent Rise in Labor Unionization
January 20, 2023 // Considering unions’ historical role in curbing disproportionate corporate profits and inequality, it makes sense that the NLRB reported a 57% jump in union representation petitions and 14% more complaints of unfair labor practices in the first half of 2022. In the current moment, it seems that workers are turning to unionization as a means of righting the wrongs of corporate inequality. But this push for unions, while having recently enjoyed a burst of momentum, has been a long time coming. Public support for unions stands at 71%, up from 48% in 2010 and at its highest since 1965, according to a recent Gallup poll. Organizers are also being buoyed by a political environment conducive to labor organizing. President Biden has taken decidedly pro-union stances since entering office, replacing Trump’s pro-business and anti-labor NLRB general counsel with former union attorney Jennifer Abruzzo and backing the PRO Act, which would simplify the process of unionizing. It also helps that unions have evaded the extreme partisanship that has swamped most other issues in contemporary politics: While Democrats are twice as likely to view unions favorably compared to Republicans, almost half of Republicans still say that they would approve of unionization in their workplaces.
U.S. labor strikes went up almost 50% between 2021 and 2022
January 18, 2023 // Union membership and strike activity has fallen in the decades since King’s death. But more recently, that has been changing. The number of strikes in the United States rose almost 50% between 2021 and 2022, according to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. That pickup in activity has momentum.
Tech Layoffs Threaten Unions’ Plan to Draw White-Collar Workers
January 18, 2023 // Some 500 technology companies have axed nearly 100,000 workers since last October, according to Layoffs.fyi, a public database of tech layoffs. Amazon this month announced it would cut 18,000 jobs, and on the same day, cloud computing company Salesforce and the online video-sharing service Vimeo said they would slash 10% and 11% of their staffs, respectively. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said in November it would eliminate 11,000 jobs—about 13% of its staff. Those reductions in force don’t bode well for unions that have increasingly funneled resources into tech organizing, which was, until recently, seen as an ever-growing pool of potential members. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, last year raised membership fees for the first time in two decades, hoping to raise $10 million a year for new organizing. Union leaders this month flocked to Las Vegas for the CES technology conference, set on understanding how the latest innovations in artificial intelligence could disrupt their industries.
Strikes And Rallies In The Workplace: Essex County 2022 Year In Review
January 3, 2023 // But despite their concerns, the percentage of workers in labor unions grew in New Jersey over the following year. New Jersey had about 600,000 union members in 2020, roughly 16.1 percent of all wage and salary workers in the state. The total was up from 15.7 percent in 2019 and 14.9 percent in 2018, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Year in Review: Worker strikes surged in 2022 amid new unionization wave
December 27, 2022 // There were 374 worker strikes in 2022, according to researchers at Cornell University, a hefty 39% increase from the year before. There were several factors at play in the growth, a major one being that workers had far more leverage this past year due to mass labor shortages. Healthcare workers made up a big contingent of the organized labor movement in 2022. In September, 15,000 nurses in Minnesota staged a three-day walkout in what was likely the largest private-sector nurse strike in the country’s history. There were several other strikes by healthcare workers over the past year as well.
History in the making as Schofield Home Care workers vote majority to unionize
December 7, 2022 // The employees of the Schofield Home Health Care in the Town of Tonawanda have won the vote to unionize with 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.
New service union seeks to inspire labor movement in South
November 22, 2022 // Organizers of USSW seek to supplement, rather than compete with, existing movements like Starbucks Workers United. The group will join the nearly 2 million members of the Service Employees International Union, and its demands include better pay, fair grievance processes, safe workplaces, health care benefits and consistent scheduling.
Where Six Louisville Unionization Efforts Stand
November 17, 2022 // While there has been a boom in unionization efforts in Louisville, there has also been, for the most part, pushback from employers, who have largely demanded employees vote rather than voluntarily recognize unions.
Union bosses rake it in, even as their ranks shrink
November 15, 2022 // The new report, provocatively titled “Labor’s Fortress of Finance” by the pro-labor Radish Research, looks at the balance sheets of big unions since 2010, based on financial statements they must file with the Department of Labor. It finds that, over that period, unions have lost some 710,000 members, yet union membership revenues increased by one-third, to $18 billion — 85% of that from fees on members, which grew by a similar rate. By contrast, union spending increased by just 18% over that time. The money that unions expended representing workers, for instance, improved by just 13%. As a result, the surplus (the equivalent of profits at a business) that unions generated grew almost sixfold, to nearly $2.5 billion in 2021, from just $426 million in 2010. Collectively, their cash on hand more than doubled in 11 years to $11.3 billion, their investments soared nearly 150% to $17.4 billion, and their net assets rose 120%, to $31.6 billion.
Union members rally for Democrats in Dorchester ahead of midterm elections
September 27, 2022 // On Saturday, hundreds of unionized workers gathered in Dorchester to show their support for gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey and attorney general candidate Andrea Campbell, two Democratic women who, if elected, will make history at the polls. The event was held in the parking lot of IBEW Local 103, where Healey and Campbell addressed the crowd while standing on a flatbed trailer. After the rally, some in the crowd planned to canvas door-to-door and ask voters to cast ballots for Democrats running for statewide office. Republican, Geoff Diehl, Donald J. Trump