POLITICS
The Public Supports Labor, State Legislatures Vary
Despite public backing for unions across states, labor restrictions remain common policy in state houses.
Union membership numbers are out for 2021, and membership continues to decline. Currently only 10.3% of American workers are members of a union. Yet other factors point to organized labor’s power. Labor militancy is on the rise. The public sector’s union membership, where many expected to see declines in a post-Janus v. AFSCME world, remains steady. Labor shortages exacerbated by a lingering pandemic are giving workers more bargaining power.
So, the question remains: how can workers make political gains? And how can they make gains within political structures that make unionization difficult and hard to sustain?
The states play a critical role in U.S. labor law, and states have both diverging histories and responses to organized labor. In an article recently published in The Journal of Public Policy, Joshua Jansa and I examine public support for organized labor and the conditions under which state legislatures pass restrictive organized labor policy. One might suggest that party control of government is the driving factor for labor restrictions. Republicans, after all, have been opposed to labor unions for a very long time. While party control is important, we find that union power and public support for organized labor lower the likelihood of restrictive policy. Labor restrictions are less likely to pass if lower- and middle- income residents are more favorable toward organized labor.
Our analysis looks at the years 1992 through 2014. We gather all national surveys that contain both state of residence and a question about support for or opposition to organized labor. From this large set of questions, we use dynamic multilevel regression and post-stratification to construct state level estimates of labor support for each state over time. We estimate average support for unions as well as support for unions by class, so we can test for differences in responsiveness of state government to the preferences of the wealthy, the middle class and the poor. To measure labor policy we include: right-to-work, prevailing wage, prevailing wage preemption, wage bargaining, and PLA restrictions (a collective bargaining agreement between trade unions and contractors). Though our data stops at 2014, we imagine changing COVID safety protocols would make an important extension to our work, as there have been large variations in the actions of state governments.
Unions have considerable support among the general public. In the following plot, I show our estimates of labor support in each state over time by income group. In every state, average levels of support are above the 50% favorable midpoint. Importantly, this pattern of support has been consistent for the last 30 years. The upper income third always has the lowest levels of support in each state, but even here average favorability for many states’ high- income group is around 45%. While upper income people tend to disapprove of organized labor, middle and low-income opinion tends to be much more favorable.
One difference in public opinion toward labor in individual states is that the gap between high and low-income groups has grown in many of them. For example, take Ohio, a place that has historically had high levels of unionization but has lower levels of support for organized labor in our measure. This result is largely due to the polarization of high- and low- income groups. Other states like Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin show similar splits in opinion. Georgia, on the other hand, has one of the most restrictive sets of labor policy but also very high levels of union support across income groups suggesting that some other pattern is taking place there.
Levels of union support, as well as higher levels of unionization, can help to curtail labor restrictive policies. However, this result is not perfect, and every new policy can change the balance of political power. We are less optimistic overall that merely public support toward unions would be enough to stop the drift towards restrictive labor policies. Opinion alone is a relatively weak check on political power. When the Republican Party controls state governments, GOP legislators tend to enact the types of policies they support, which often limit workers. These laws often pass less noticed nationally, in the South or Great Plains states with Republican governments, low unionization, and comparatively low labor support. It is possible that in states where labor support is stronger, media tended to draw attention to potential restrictions, making those restrictions more difficult to pass unnoticed.
Public opinion toward organized labor is only one way to think about the power of organized labor. Public sentiment isn’t permanent nor is it often enough to sway policymakers. Yet having the public on the side of unions can help to bolster organizing and shift some of the trends toward deunionization. There may not be as many union members as there once was, but the public seems to like unions. Might this fact be the seed of future growth and renewal in the labor movement?
