Unions Score Some Victories but Still Face Many Obstacles

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an upsurge in US labor organizing. This increase in strike activity and union campaigns is a product, in part, of greater worker awareness of the value of unions.

Unions bring many benefits. Higher unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic wellbeing. According to a report published by the Economic Policy Institute, on average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 10.2 percent more in wages than a peer with similar education, occupation, and experience in a nonunionized workplace in the same industry; hourly wages for women represented by a union are 4.7 percent higher on average than for nonunionized women with comparable characteristics.

The creation of unions at Starbucks and Amazon illustrates a new dynamic that brings together workers across marginalized groups—such as women, racialized people, and LGBTQIA+ people—who are joining forces to fight for better working conditions and rights. But even when there are victories like these, it is still a struggle for workers to convert union recognition votes into lasting contractual protections.

The Ongoing Struggle at Amazon

A worker covered by a union contract earns 10.2 percent more in wages than a peer…in a nonunionized workplace.

The historic union election victory in 2022 at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, NY, sent shockwaves throughout the United States and beyond, but New York is not the only place Amazon workers are organizing.

“In my department that I work in, we were dealing with some issues that we felt were unfair, as in the way they were writing us up,” Amazon employee Nannette Plascencia told NPQ. Plascencia has worked at Amazon since 2015 and has led the unionization effort at the company’s ONT8 warehouse in Moreno Valley, CA.

“It had to do with broken conveyor belts and problems, issues we had with receiving certain packages and stuff. So, we had a lot of issues going on, which counted against us…because we had a rate we had to make. And if we didn’t make that quota, and we could get written up and then eventually get fired,” she said.

Workers at the ONT8 warehouse have been doing the careful work of organizing for years as they seek to join the Amazon Labor Union. The road is difficult. These workers face the same union-busting tactics from Amazon management that workers have experienced in Staten Island; Bessemer, AL; and elsewhere.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that regulates labor–management relations, has accused Amazon of a slew of illegal anti-union practices, among them firing many workers in retaliation for backing a union. Nonetheless, many experts question whether the NLRB’s efforts, no matter how vigorous, can assure that workers have a fair shot at unionizing.

“We got hit hard when Amazon brought in their union busters,” Plascencia noted, indicating that the firm’s mandatory captive audience meetings effectively curtailed support for the union. “Because Amazon was having us go to these meetings, a lot of the workers said, ‘Well, Amazon, it wouldn’t be lying to us, wouldn’t be making stuff up,’” she said.

Unions Are Popular, but Popularity Is Not Always Enough

According to the last Gallup poll on the topic, seven in 10 Americans approve of labor unions, just shy of the record-high approval rating for organized labor achieved two years before.

The report, published at the beginning of September 2024, found that 70 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, while 23 percent disapprove, and seven percent have no opinion. This is one percentage point shy of the 71 percent reading in 2022, which marked the highest approval rating since 1965.

“We just had our 500th [Starbucks] store unionized, so people are still inspired to keep going.”

Approval of labor unions varies across party lines, with Democrats showing more support than Republicans; independents fall in the middle of the two groups. About 94 percent of Democrats approve of labor unions, up six percentage points from last year. Meanwhile, 49 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents said the same, per Gallup. Notably, the poll was conducted between August 1 and August 20, 2024—largely between the Republican and Democratic national conventions, both of which had labor union speakers.

While union membership is broadly popular, getting new union recognition remains difficult. This is a major reason why there are far fewer union members than people who profess to support unions.

The Starbucks Case and the Supreme Court

In 2021, workers in Buffalo, NY, formed the first Starbucks union. Since then, over 10,000 workers at more than 500 of the 9,000 coffee shops in the United States have chosen Starbucks Workers United (SWU) as their representative. However, it was not until February 2024 that worker organizing got the company to agree to begin collective bargaining with the union.

Those negotiations continue. But Starbucks recently won a court case that might make it easier to resist unionization. In June 2024, the US Supreme Court backed Starbucks, overturning a lower court ruling forcing the coffee company to reinstate seven baristas fired in Memphis for alleged labor organizing. The court’s action effectively makes it harder for unions to have workers reinstated—and easier for companies to avoid an order to reinstate fired workers.

As Jaz Brisack, a cofounder of the Starbucks workers union, wrote in the New York Times, “While workers wait for justice, a company that engages in unlawful activity reaps the immediate and desired effects of its actions: The pro-union worker is thrown out of the workplace, and those who remain are afraid to speak up, lest they suffer the same fate. Not only are the minimal consequences insufficient deterrents, but companies also have every incentive to break the law.”

[Senate Bills 790 and 791] will ensure that home care workers in Michigan can unionize, bargain collectively, and negotiate better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

The good news is that on the ground, the union drive at Starbucks continues. “I was aware of these cases and the fact that they are being worked out in court and we’re really waiting on seeing what these decisions lead to,” JJ Dizon, a seven-year store veteran at the chain’s Yuba City location, told NPQ.

He added, “We just had our 500th store unionized, so people are still inspired to keep going. I just think that speaks to the power of what we’re doing and how important unions are.”

A Michigan State Victory for Home Healthcare Workers

Care work is a service that is in high demand throughout the United States, with an estimated 692,000 Americans on waiting lists (for an average of more than three years) to receive in-home services through Medicaid.

Michael Ewing has been a home care worker in Michigan for more than 10 years, starting after his mother began experiencing symptoms of epilepsy. “My working conditions were, they were getting poorer. I was also losing out financially, caring for people where their insurance wouldn’t pay me. That’s why I decided to join a union in the first place,” said Ewing.

Michigan home care workers notched a victory recently, as the state House of Representatives voted yes on Senate Bills 790 and 791, which restored home care worker rights stripped away in 2012, according to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The bills will ensure that home care workers in Michigan can unionize, bargain collectively, and negotiate better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Presently, Michigan’s home care workers average a wage of only $13.53 an hour. Low pay, a lack of essential benefits like health insurance and paid time off, and little access to consistent training opportunities have led to an alarming shortage of home care workers throughout the state.

Ewing’s union, Michigan Home Care Workers United, had been championing the two bills since March. With this House vote and a second affirmative vote with the state senate, this legislation will move to the desk of Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) to be signed into law in the coming weeks.

Victories and Ongoing Struggle

The policy win in Michigan should encourage home care workers to organize—at least in Michigan. Worker progress at Starbucks is also encouraging despite the resistance these workers face. And at Boeing in Seattle, 33,000 union machinists just won a 38 percent wage increase over the next four years and better benefits after a 53-day strike. Though they fell short of getting a defined-benefit pension program restored, their achievements will quite possibly inspire further worker organizing.

Of course, in many states and many workplaces, workers still lack union protection. In 2023, union membership was 400,000 people greater than in 2021, but overall US union membership rates remain low—10 percent overall and 6 percent in the private sector. Efforts to expand organizing, such as the United Auto Workers’ organizing victory in Tennessee in the spring of 2024, offer portents that these numbers may begin to change.

If they do change, it will have a lot to do with a combination of union organizing skills and the support of workers like Ewing. When asked why he backed the union at his workplace, Ewing said, “I knew the importance of being part of a union. It means, on an economic scale, that the things I need will be a lot more affordable.”