In their new working paper entitled “Does Anger Drive Populism?,” scholars Omer Ali, Klaus Desmet, and Romain Wacziarg assess whether anger makes voters more likely to vote for populist candidates like Donald Trump. The public discourse around the 2016 election strongly suggested that the answer is “yes.” These scholars set out to test that hypothesis.
The study compares responses to Gallup survey questions in which respondents reported their level of “anger” with President Trump’s 2016 vote share, Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 vote share, and any increase in Trump’s 2016 vote share when compared with Senator Mitt Romney’s 2012 vote share. The authors found that counties with angrier voters were more likely to vote for the populist candidate. That’s not surprising. The surprise is that introducing other factors into their analysis --- specifically, voters’ negative evaluations of their lives and their other negative emotions --- rendered anger insignificant as a cause of populist voting patterns. So, anger is a part of the decision to vote for a populist, but does not drive voters’ decisions alone.
This intriguing study caused me to wonder whether anger drives unionism. As with the public discourse around the 2016 election, commentary about the rise in worker activism, strikes, and union organizing since 2020 has also focused on anger. I confess to offering this assessment in some of my own public comments. There is a great deal for workers to be angry about: their treatment by many employers during the pandemic, skyrocketing corporate profits unmatched by robust real wages increases, and rampant violations of labor law, among other things. But is anger driving workers’ activism and union organizing? And is it a good thing if anger drives unionism?
Unfortunately, we do not have a careful empirical study like the Ali/Desmet/Wacziarg paper in the worker organizing scholarly canon (that I could find) to help answer those questions, but it is certainly possible to offer some preliminary thoughts that might be tested through further empirical labor relations research.
My preliminary answer is that anger can be and is helpful to worker activism and organizing, but it also can be perilous. Ali/Desmet/Wacziarg summarize a comprehensive review of the psychology literature to explain how anger can affect decision-making in ways that are distinct from other emotions. Their summary offers four insights that provide a framework for thinking about anger in the context of union organizing and worker activism.
First, anger causes individuals to blame others. Second, and closely related, anger causes individuals to be less likely to trust outgroup members, more likely to hold negative perceptions of outgroup members, and more likely to take action against them. Certainly, in order for worker organizing to succeed, workers must see a need and urgency to join together with their co-workers (ingroup) rather than rely on the boss (outgroup) to deliver for them. By sharpening the assignment of blame and clarifying relationships, anger can help with that education process.
Yet, these two phenomena also can make anger risky in worker organizing. Anger and blame can be aimed at the boss, but also at individual supervisors, co-workers, or other members of the broader community in damaging ways. It must be carefully channeled and fact-based, or risk devolving into personal vendetta. Anger increases the propensity for stereotyping, which means it can lead to indelible caricatures of bosses, supervisors, managers, and co-workers that will make working with them difficult. In most cases, workers who win a union are going to work alongside supervisors and co-workers who opposed the union. Anger that persists will not make that easier or build solidarity or empathy for the future. Anger also may make it more difficult to overcome existing stereotypes and divisions between workers based on issues like race, gender, religion, and ethnicity. Workers must calibrate and focus their anger on real issues (more on this below) and the right target --- the employer --- rather than allowing it to drift into harmful, cartoonish portrayals of managers, supervisors, and co-workers.
Third, angry people are more willing to make risky decisions because they are more optimistic about the actions’ outcomes. In America, organizing a union is immensely risky for workers. Widespread illegal firings of pro-union employees by name-brand employers are only one part of that risk. Merely challenging your boss is difficult for workers when the law provides little meaningful protection. So, in this regard, anger can facilitate workers’ decision to organize. On the other hand, there is a risk anger will inspire a few workers to engage in more extreme behaviors that can undermine solidarity and imperil co-workers, like violence on a picket line. For this reason, anger must be controlled.
Finally, anger builds on itself, including by increasing the persuasiveness of anger-inducing arguments and perceiving events as adding to anger. Again, these responses create both opportunities and risks. They can help strengthen and expand organizers’ and co-workers’ arguments in support of worker organizing and build momentum in organizing campaigns. Anger also can help organizers seize opportunities that demonstrate the need for a union. For example, exposure of a workplace safety or health risk or an employer calling the police on peaceful protestors can crystallize the argument for union representation very effectively.
However, anger also reduces attention to the details of an argument. Anyone paying the slightest attention to the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump, as well as ongoing racist attacks on immigrants and homophobic assaults threatening LGBTQ+ Americans, has seen this phenomenon in action. These fantastical, afactual, hateful, and damaging arguments are made more likely and more successful by anger. There is a reason demagogues endlessly stoke anger --- their rants fall on increasingly willing ears as anger rises.
Worker organizing, however, cannot survive in that kind of environment. Workers seeking to organize must build solidarity and commonality of interest. They must provide education and hope. They must break down barriers between workers and focus them on improving their lives through collective action. They must prepare workers to bargain with their employer. Anger cannot be allowed to distract from those critical tasks.
