A new Gallup poll shows 71 percent of Americans now approve of labor unions, the highest mark since 1965, concurrent with a huge wave in union organizing.
Gallup also noted a 57 percent leap in union election petitions filed during the first six months of fiscal year 2021.
Another survey commissioned by a coalition of advocacy groups found that by a whopping 56 to 37 percent margin, voters would favor a Democratic candidate who supports unionization over a Republican who opposes them.
Further, a recent Pew Research Center poll, 58 percent of Americans said the decline in union membership has been bad for the country, and 61 percent said it has been bad for workers.
During the first half of this year, unions won 639 NLRB elections, the highest total in nearly 20 years, bringing a union voice to 43,092 workers, more than double the prior year.
Unions are campaigning at Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, Trader Joe's, REI, Chipotle.
It has also included registered nurses at hospitals in a wide array of states, including Maine Medical Center in Maine, Doctors Hospital of Manteca in California, Longmont Hospital in Colorado, and Coral Gables Hospital in Florida, among others, the past two years.
Union workers' wages are 11 percent higher on average than for their non-union counterparts. Union members are more likely to have employer-paid health coverage and pension plans, access to sick pay, and a voice on the job on workplace conditions and safety.
The economic benefits are even more apparent on race and gender. Black, Latino and women union workers are paid 26, 39 and 23 percent more respectively. Union contracts are also far more likely to provide protection from unfair discipline, as well as discrimination based on race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity.
As corporate profits skyrocketed, and the wealthiest of the wealthy got richer, the consequences were devastating for working people, especially for Black, Latino and other communities of color. Today three people now own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. CEOs are paid times 350 times more than their average worker.
The stock portfolios of the top 1 percent are worth $23 trillion. Since 2009 the wealth of U.S. billionaires has mushroomed from $1.3 trillion to $4.7 billion but the national minimum wage remains frozen at $7.25 an hour.
And membership in unions, clearly identified by their corporate and political adversaries as a key impediment to this massive shift, plummeted from 35 percent of all workers in the 1950s to about 10 percent today.
Many Democratic politicians were complicit, or at best bystanders in this disastrous trend. Jimmy Carter embraced austerity and deregulation. Bill Clinton went full board with the corporate friendly NAFTA agreement, lifting more financial industry regulations than Reagan or Bush, and a savage assault on welfare recipients. Barack Obama de-prioritized and rapidly abandoned major labor legislation to reverse key elements of the virulently anti-union Taft-Hartley Act and restore the intended role of labor law to protect worker and union rights.
The biggest test will be if Democrats can maintain and increase their majority in the Senate in the upcoming election, abolish the filibuster and move the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act bill—and other essential stalled legislation—through the Senate to Biden's desk. The PRO Act would blunt some of the most routine employer harassment common in union campaigns. And it would set real penalties for anti-union corporate employers who wantonly violate worker's democratic rights even after they have won a union election, as Starbucks, Amazon and dozens of less prominent employers have done.
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