A New Poll Sheds Light on American Beliefs about Unions | Roundup #12
Americans largely support Pro-Union candidates, sectoral bargaining, and more...
Hope you had a nice thanksgiving! This week’s post will be a bit shorter than usual, but wanted to share some of the fascinating insights from this recent Data for Progress poll on various union topics. (Disclosure: I’m currently consulting with Data For Progress but did not play a role in this survey)
We’ve known for a while that 71% of Americans support unions and 75% support the Amazon Labor Union. But the DFP poll goes into more nuanced topics, like support for pro-union political candidates, whether or not employers should be able to host mandatory anti-union meetings (aka “captive audience” meetings), and sectoral bargaining policies like the FAST Recovery Act.
Let’s dive in.
Here are three significant insights from the Data for Progress poll:
1) Voters don’t think employees should be required to attend anti-union meetings
American opposition to these “captive audience” meetings is quite strong, with even 66% of Republicans and 65% of Independents opposing them.
In fact, there is bipartisan support for policies that make these anti-union meetings optional for employees.
This would be a big deal for Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple Store employees that are trying to organize their workplace. In just the past year, each of those employers forced workers to attend anti-union meetings wherever there was a union drive.
2) Democrats, Independents, and more than a third of Republicans are more likely to back candidates who are pro-union
This is also quite remarkable to see. A full third of Republicans and a plurality of Independents are more likely to support a candidate that is pro-union. Of course, the Republicans would not be very likely to run pro-union candidates in the future given it hurts them more than helps them (just by judging the poll result above).
But Democrats could still run pro-union candidates and potentially persuade labor friendly Republicans to switch sides.
3) Voters across partly lines support sectoral bargaining policies
What’s even more surprising to me than voter support for existing union efforts is that a bipartisan coalition of voters would support sector-wide unions, similar to what is done in multiple European countries, like France, Sweden, and Germany.
Moreover 66% of American voters support the FAST Recovery Act, the California law that will set standards for the fast food industry as a whole. We talked about this new law in the very first Workonomics roundup:
Overall, quite fascinating poll! Curious to see if it gives a boost to efforts to ban captive audience meetings (like the law passed in Connecticut) or campaigns to allow sectoral bargaining models in more states.
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