Part 1 of our analysis of the results of Power At Work’s Quarterly Labor Issues Survey (Q3 2024) analyzed labor insiders’ and knowledgeable outsiders’ predictions of how union members would vote in the 2024 elections and the outcomes of those elections. In Part 2, this post will discuss our respondents’ assessments of events that strengthened and weakened worker power during the first half of 2024.
We asked labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders to rank two lists of labor-related 2024 events or activities based on whether they increased or decreased worker power. Two activities that that increased worker power were the clear favorites:
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Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voting to be represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW), and
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the agreement between Starbucks and Starbucks Workers United to negotiate a framework.
Although our respondents’ votes were spread more broadly when we asked about events that decreased worker power in 2024, three law-related events stood out:
Although our respondents’ votes were spread more broadly when we asked about events that decreased worker power in 2024, three law-related events stood out:
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the continuing inability of the National Labor Relations Board to impose effective penalties when employers commit unfair labor practices,
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Amazon's continued success in avoiding negotiating a contract with the Amazon Labor Union without meaningful legal penalties, and
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Amazon, Space X, and Trader Joe’s arguments in various forums challenging the constitutionality of the National Relations Board’s structure.
This post analyzes these choices and what they say about our labor insiders’ and knowledgeable outsiders’ views of the activities or events that affect worker power. You can learn more about these respondents by reading the second-to-last section of “Predicting the 2024 Election and Labor’s Votes: Results from the Quarterly Power At Work Labor Issues Survey (Q3 2024) – Part 1.”
Respondents: Organizing and Resilience Increased Worker Power in 2024
The Power At Work Quarterly Labor Issues Survey provided our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders with a list of 17 events that occurred in the first half of 2024 and asked which events have been most important to increasing worker power. They were invited to vote for up to five options. Our respondents were most focused on organizing, and especially those impressively resilient organizing efforts that have taken years to produce victories. Their top two choices highlighted successful organizing efforts in 2024: the UAW at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee (16% of all votes), and the nationwide organizing by Starbucks Workers United that forced Starbucks to begin negotiating a framework agreement for all 400-plus unionized stores (15% of all votes).
Result – Persistence Means Power: Persistence and resilience certainly seemed to impress our respondents. The UAW has been organizing workers at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant for a decade. Starbucks workers began organizing more recently: workers in Buffalo, New York filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and formed Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) in August 2021. Nonetheless, baristas around the country have survived three years of captive audience meetings, illegal retaliation, firings, and Starbucks’ steadfast refusal to bargain despite the NLRB’s certification of the union’s election wins. With Starbucks’ refusal to bargain, it looked as though SBWU might not be able to translate organizing successes into contracts. Now, the union appears to have a path forward, even if those negotiations may take a while to produce a final deal.
The third most popular choice --- “various unions' continued success organizing workers on college and university campuses” (9% of all votes) --- also suggests the appeal of perseverance in organizing. Some campus-based unions needed years to win elections. At Northeastern University, for example, it took graduate student workers 9 years to secure a union. For New York University’s contract faculty, it took 7 years. Other organizing drives that succeeded more quickly, like SEIU’s election win among the members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, got some recognition from our respondents, but not a lot (4% of all votes).
Result – Organizing Breakthroughs Appeal to Our Respondents: Another take on these results is that our respondents were favorably impressed by organizing campaigns that represented breakthroughs into new regions or underrepresented industries. The UAW’s victory at Volkswagen marks the first auto plant in the South to organize. SBWU has succeeded in organizing in the food service and drinking establishments industry despite that industry’s paltry 1.6% union density rate in 2023. Our respondents also cast 6% of their votes (tied for 4th most votes) for “Communications Workers of America organizing successes at Microsoft's Activision Blizzard.” The tech industry has been notoriously union avoidant, which has raised alarm bells that unions might be shut out of the emerging digital, tech-rich, AI-driven world of the future of work. CWA demonstrated in 2024 that, through careful and innovative strategies and aggressive, persistent organizing, tech workers can build the future with a union.
Result – Collective Bargaining Successes Don’t Score As Well: In addition to the commencement of negotiations between Starbucks and SBWU, we offered our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders 8 choices --- almost half of all possible answers --- that focused on collective bargaining successes. These potential answers ranged from the Teamsters’ successful strike against and bargaining with Molson-Coors to the Transport Workers Union’s success winning a contract for flight attendants at Southwest Airlines after five years of bargaining to the UAW’s contract with Daimler Truck, which was also a big auto victory in the South. None of these choices won more than 5% of the available votes. Most got significantly fewer.
Of course, collective bargaining is the mechanism for workers to secure many of the benefits that caused them to organize a union: higher wages, better benefits, safety and health protections, protections against discrimination and unfairness, retirement security, and a voice in the workplace, among others. Collective bargaining agreements also provide stability to the workers and the union for the duration of the contract (up to three years), in most cases. Our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders certainly understand the importance of collective bargaining and the contracts it usually produces, so lack of knowledge cannot explain the low vote totals for bargaining-related answers. On the other hand, our respondents also almost certainly know that collective bargaining is possible only after organizing has succeeded. For this reason, they may consider organizing more important. That would be a reasonable position.
Another possible explanation may be that successful collective bargaining is less salient to our respondents than organizing victories and collective actions like strikes. For example, there was a great deal more national news coverage and social media traffic around the Volkswagen election than the American Federation of Musicians’ successful negotiations with the Hollywood studios. Elections feature conflict, campaigning, drama, and (sometimes) cliffhanger endings. They are rich fodder for reporters. Bargaining features a lot of, well, talking. About a contract that has pages of details and legal language. We understand how the former would be more engaging, more salient, and seemingly more important than the latter.
Respondents: Weak Laws and Employers’ Unremedied Lawbreaking Decrease Worker Power
Power At Work asked our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders “which of the following have been the most important events decreasing worker power and weakening unions in 2024 to date?” Six out of 13 possible answers related to weak or anti-union labor laws. These six options were our respondents’ top choices. They could not have made their views clearer: weak or anti-union laws are meaningful barriers to worker power, and perhaps the most important barriers.
Results – Weak Labor Laws Allow Employer Exploitation: Our respondents have apparently concluded that many employers will deploy any means necessary to avoid or bust unions, whether legal or illegal, and these employers do not want government getting in their way. Our labor insiders’ and knowledgeable outsiders’ top two choices highlighted real and related weaknesses in federal private-sector labor law that facilitate employer lawbreaking:
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The continuing inability of the National Labor Relations Board to impose effective penalties when employers commit unfair labor practices (16%); and
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Amazon's continued success in avoiding negotiating a contract with the Amazon Labor Union without meaningful legal penalties (15%). [Note: similar choices citing negotiations involving Trader Joe’s and REI received many fewer votes.]
Power At Work’s labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders also highlighted several corporations’ assault on the NLRB, which protects workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. “Amazon, Space X, and Trader Joe's arguments in various forums challenging the constitutionality of the National Relations Board’s structure” received 14% of all votes. Interestingly, even with weak laws to enforce, our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders still value the NLRB as a defender of workers’ rights and worker power.
Results – The Problem Isn’t Merely Federal: Our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders did not restrict their criticism to federal private-sector labor law. Nine percent responded that the “new Florida law requiring public-sector unions with fewer than 60% of members paying dues to decertify, prohibiting automatic dues deduction, and imposing other strict rules” was an important force undermining worker power. Power At Work will publish a blogcast entitled “Florida’s Attack on Public Employee Unions” on August 20th. Please watch that important discussion to learn more about Florida’s law.
Ten percent responded that “Uber, Lyft and other platform companies continuing to classify their drivers as ‘independent contractors’ legally unable to organize a union” was most important to weakening worker power. This is both a state and federal issue. If these platform workers are independent contractors, then states could enact laws allowing them to organize and bargain collectively. In fact, states could create any rules they would like to facilitate unions organizing platform workers. On the other hand, the NLRB could determine that these platform workers are “employees” protected by the National Labor Relations Act and eligible to organize under federal private-sector labor law (and, therefore, state laws would be preempted). Our respondents have apparently concluded that the lack of either of these legal reforms is a meaningful contributor to decreasing worker power.
Result – Bargaining and Organizing Failures Raised Fewer Concerns: Power At Work included a list of reasonably high-profile organizing and bargaining failures as potential responses to the question about the events that have most decreased worker power in 2024. Only the UAW’s defeat at the Vance, Alabama Mercedes plant (8% of all votes and 7th on the list) and the almost two-year strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette without a contract (6% of all votes and 8th on the list) garnered much attention from our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders.
There are two likely explanations for the small number of votes these bargaining and organizing options garnered. First, these individual organizing and bargaining events do not have the reach of systemic labor law problems. The law’s failure to deter, curtail, and punish employers’ anti-union violations affects tens of millions of workers. A single union representation election loss and one employer’s successful intransigence at the bargaining table affects many fewer workers. Accordingly, our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders simply may be less concerned about events with a lesser scope.
Second, these individual bargaining and organizing outcomes may be reversible. As noted above, for example, the UAW took 10 years and three elections to win at Volkswagen. The smart money is that the UAW’s supporters in the Mercedes plant in Vance will seek a new election as soon as they feel ready. By contrast, the failures of labor law appear to be chronic and unfixable. Weak laws and handcuffed enforcement have been features of American labor relations for decades. Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court and the likely partisan divide in Congress, hope of change soon is thin. It is not surprising that our respondents prioritized these legal problems in their voting.
Conclusion
This is the second Power At Work Quarterly Labor Issues Survey. Some of the responses we have received so far were surprising. We discussed a few of those surprises in Part 1 and our post discussing the first Quarterly Labor Issues Survey. But the questions and answers discussed above are not the least bit surprising. Organizing is the most important activity building worker power, particularly when it requires resilience and perseverance. Organizing that opens new regions or new industries (or both) also builds worker power. Broken labor laws that cannot guard against employer lawbreaking, and laws passed to bust unions, are weakening worker power. These conclusions should not surprise any member of Power At Work’s loyal audience. But the purpose of the Quarterly Labor Issues Survey is not to produce surprises. It is to give a voice to our labor insiders and knowledgeable outsiders. It succeeded, again.
We close with the same invitation extended in Part 1: the best way to ensure you have an opportunity to participate in the next Quarterly Labor Issues Survey, and to keep up with all the great content on Power At Work, is to subscribe to the Power At Work Blog today. Go to the front page of Power At Work and subscribe right now!
