Labor union popularity pops to near record highs following summer of strikes

Approval ratings for organized labor bounced back to near record highs after dipping slightly last summer during a number of high-profile strikes and work stoppages.

Labor union approval rose to 70 percent in August from 67 percent in August 2023, according to the annual union survey conducted by polling agency Gallup published Wednesday.

In 2022, ratings surged to 71 percent, their highest level since 1965, as inflation climbed to an annual increase of 9 percent. Wages that summer were up only 5.4 percent on an annual basis, putting a squeeze on household expenses for millions of Americans.

Unions have been gaining in popularity in the U.S. for about 15 years, with approval accelerating over the course of the pandemic, according to Gallup.

Labor groups celebrated the boost in positive sentiment from Americans.

“Americans know that unions give working people the freedom to get ahead,” American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees President Lee Saunders wrote in a Wednesday statement.

Inflation and union sentiment are not always correlated, as approval ratings for labor declined over the 1970s and early 1980s even as inflation spiked in successive waves during that time period.

However, that earlier period of inflation is widely attributed to a wage-price spiral, in which higher prices led to higher wages, which in turn led to higher prices. More of the U.S. workforce was contracted under organized labor then, as union membership has declined from a high around 25 percent since the late 1950s.

The global post-pandemic inflation, which was initially caused by shortages from economic shutdowns and then bolstered by other factors like profit margin expansion and increased consumer savings, has increasingly been viewed by Americans as attributable to “corporate greed.”

A February poll from the left-leaning consultancies Global Strategy Group and GBAO found a 15 percent increase in the portion of respondents saying that “corporations being greedy” is a “major cause” of inflation since January 2022.

The political consequences of inflation have extended beyond organized labor, dragging President’Biden’s economic approval ratings down even as the economy boomed during its recovery from the pandemic.

Between 2021 and 2022, Biden’s economic ratings fell to historic lows, according to polling by Gallup , falling as low as 35 percent in 2023 before rebounding slightly this year to 38 percent. Among recent presidents, only former President George W. Bush, who oversaw the start of the Great Recession, had a lower ranking.

The 2023 dip in union approval, bucking longer term trends, may have been prompted by a number of strikes among high-profile organizations such as the Hollywood SAG-AFTRA union and the Writers Guild of America.

Teamsters with UPS, the United Auto Workers, Kaiser Permanente unions, and the Los Angeles Unified School District also struck as the summer of 2023 was dubbed by turns the “summer of strikes” and the “hot labor summer.”

New strikes in 2023 involving 1,000 or more workers numbered 33, a 43 percent uptick from the previous year and the highest number in more than 20 years, according to Labor Department data.

According to a broader tally maintained by the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, there were 470 work stoppages in 2023 involving 539,000 workers and around 25 million total strike days.

Work stoppages increased by 9 percent that year from 2022, and the number of workers who stopped working due to labor actions increased by 141 percent, according to the Cornell data.

Union approval over the post-war period has only been consistently higher than its current level for one stretch in the 1950s when it hovered at 75 percent.

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