Kelly Hayes: Welcome to Movement Memos, a Truthout podcast about organizing, solidarity, and the work of making change. I’m your host, writer and organizer Kelly Hayes. Today, we are talking about labor struggles in the United States, and how the battles being waged in the present fit within a larger lineage of struggle. We will be hearing from labor reporter Kim Kelly, author of the award-winning book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor.
Recent decades have not been kind to labor unions in the U.S. The percentage of U.S. workers in unions peaked in 1954 at 35% — during a decade when three out of four Americans had a favorable opinion of unions. Union membership would plummet in subsequent decades, as the ruling class waged a neoliberal offensive, weakening the bargaining power of many workers, in a changing economy. Meanwhile, employer and bipartisan efforts to demonize labor unions caused public support for organized labor to decline. But while the pandemic has brought record profits for corporations, it has also fueled a resurgence in labor organizing. Between October 2021 and March of 2022, union representation petitions filed at the National Labor Relations Board increased 57% from the same period in 2020 and 2021. Public support for unions hit a 57-year high in 2022, with 71% of Americans expressing a favorable opinion of labor unions.
It is no wonder that workers who were suddenly expected to risk their lives on the job, to endure the loss of coworkers, and loved ones, to get sick, and in some cases, to see their own health deteriorate, and to keep working, or work even harder, have had enough. With the energy we are seeing around labor organizing, it’s not surprising that anti-union forces are upping the ante as well, from large-scale union busting to attacks on teachers unions by corporate media.
From the beginning of the article: