Daily Times

New York: Lauded by President Joe Biden and bolstered by recent triumphs at Starbucks, the US labor movement has had reasons to cheer as attention focuses on upcoming unionization votes at Amazon.

But those bright spots do not change an overall picture that is no better than mixed in an economy that has seen unions’ share of the American workforce steadily diminish in recent decades.”Some of the president’s statements are symbolically very important,” Rebecca Givan, a labor relations expert at Rutgers University, said of Biden.

Biden, who has famously declared himself “a union guy,” tapped a former union official, Marty Walsh, to lead the Department of Labor and staffed the National Labor Relations Board with key appointees favorable to unionization.

The US president has also shown clear favoritism for unionized companies, most notably in the automobile industry, where Biden has repeatedly highlighted electric car investments by General Motors and Ford, while essentially snubbing Tesla, where employees are not represented by the United Auto Workers.

“These are incremental steps that do make a difference,” said Givan, adding that US law on labor campaigns still broadly favors industry over unions. Polling shows that 68 percent of Americans have favorable opinions of unions, according to Gallup, the highest level since 1965.

But the rate of unionization in the private sector fell again in 2021, all the way down to 6.1 percent.

At Amazon, workers at a Bessemer, Alabama warehouse last year overwhelmingly voted against a unionization push supported by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union.
But the NLRB later called for a redo of the vote, citing what it called interference by Amazon.

The e-commerce behemoth also faces a pair of votes in New York, where a group of former and current employees at two different warehouses has led a campaign that will culminate in votes in late March and late April.

The referenda were called after union backers secured signatures from the 30 percent minimum of staff to qualify for an NLRB vote.

But to make Amazon a union shop, supporters of organized labor now must win majority backing, a more daunting hurdle given that the company can make its case against the labor group at company meetings that employees must attend.