- Unions seem to be having a bit of a moment.

You may have heard about the successes of organizers at Amazon warehouses or Starbucks coffee shops, places that have historically been very difficult to unionize.

President Joe Biden has promised to be the most pro-union president in American history, and as of this filming, the entertainment industry is still hobbled by a protracted strike by writers and actors flexing their unionized muscle.

- In addition to this press, or perhaps because of it public attitudes towards organized labor are higher than they've been in almost 60 years.

71% of Americans now approve of labor unions up from a low of 48% in 2009.

- Wow.

So people really like unions and they really want to be in them.

Are we seeing a return to the union glory days of the forties and fifties?

- Not really.

In fact, not at all.

Actual union membership as a percentage of the workforce is at its lowest level of all time.

Despite the good PR, America has never been less unionized than it is right now.

- Why is that?

Well, unlike many other countries where unions are historically accepted and normalized, America has a long tradition of putting organized labor at the center of our political battlefield, resulting in a lot of complex and sometimes confusing legislation.

- And beyond that, the economic, technological and even cultural changes of the last several decades have created a landscape less hospitable to collective bargaining than ever before.

Despite their current popularity, the survival of unions has yet to be negotiated.

(soft music) - Unions date all the way back to the 18th century.

When the Industrial Revolution crammed large numbers of workers into factories, inadvertently giving them the opportunity to share their frustrations and interests.

They used two main tactics to increase their pay and improve working conditions: Collective bargaining, by which all members benefited from the union's negotiations, and strikes, which used work stoppages to demonstrate the employer's reliance on their workforce.

- Organized Labor's heyday was in the 1940s and fifties.

Thanks, in part to governmental policies, like the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which made it easier and safer to organize unions without being spied on, harassed or otherwise punished by employers.

Before that, it was common for employers to use threats, intimidation, even violence to keep their employees from organizing.

By the 1950s, about one in three American workers belonged to a union, which is credited as a key factor in that decade's relatively low economic inequality.

- But even back then, some business and political leaders were working to weaken union's power.

The Taft Hartley Act passed in 1947 limited union's bargaining strategies, like restricting certain kinds of boycotts and made it easier for employers to use non-union labor known as scabs to circumvent strikes.

Union leaders were also required to sign affidavits denouncing any communist sympathies.

And anti-union propaganda exploited white Southerners fear of desegregation to stymie the spread of unions in the textile industries of the south.

- The stagflation of the 1970s severely damaged organized labor's power and public image.

Business leaders managed to convince politicians and even their employees that unions were standing in the way of economic recovery.

Then in 1981, when Ronald Reagan, who had once been a union leader himself, summarily fired over 11,000 striking air traffic control workers, it was seen as a potentially fatal blow to the labor movement.

If the American president could take such an unequivocal stance against the rights of striking workers without any negative feedback from the voting public, perhaps union's best days were really behind them.

- It's difficult to quantify union's effect on the economy but there does seem to be a remarkable correlation between union membership and low levels of income and equality, and the decades of peak union strength were not exactly bad for business either.

Perhaps that's why in recent years as inequality has reached historic levels and a small number of corporations dominate so much of our daily lives, there's been a renewed interest in unions as a potential counterbalance.

- But the American economy and the world are very different than they were 60 years ago.

For one thing, globalization has taken one of organized labor's primary tactics off the table.

If a factory owner doesn't want to give into his striking workers' demands, he can just move the factory overseas to a country where unions aren't a problem.

America has lost a ton of manufacturing jobs as a result and the ones that are left are less secure.

- American labor law is also much less hospitable to unions than in other industrialized nations.

Right to work laws passed in 28 states allow employees to opt out of paying union dues even if they benefit from the higher pay the union negotiated for them which has crippled many union's ability to operate.

- And unlike in other countries where organizers can negotiate on behalf of all the workers in an entire company or even an entire industry, labor leaders in America must organize each individual workplace.

Starbucks by Starbucks, Amazon warehouse by Amazon Warehouse.

Each one of these campaigns is expensive and time consuming for already underpaid employees, and they face armies of high price lawyers and consultants hired by the company to stop them at all costs.

- There's another cultural trend working against labor organizing: loneliness.

In his book Bowling Alone, the political scientist Robert Putnam, chronicled how Americans are becoming more isolated, more suspicious and less likely to participate in social groups like churches, bowling leagues, and yes, unions.

- Forming a union is a daunting and scary challenge which requires strong bonds of trust and solidarity, what social scientists refer to as social capital.

This was easier when hundreds of people worked side by side in big factories.

But today, even if our employer is a giant corporation we're more likely to work in a small atomized environment or even from home.

Turnover is much more frequent.

How can you convince someone to help unionize a place they don't expect to be at very long?

And we're more likely to spend our lunch breaks staring at screens rather than chatting with coworkers.

- And yet, despite all these obstacles the will to unionize is alive and kicking.

According to the National Labor Relations Board there was a 53% increase of union petitions filed in 2022 and strikes were up 52% from the previous year.

Activists are fighting to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act which would restrict some of the tactics employers use to thwart unionizing efforts.

But with such a divided Congress its chances are hazy at best.

- As the economist Suresh Naidu writes, between the employer side advantages given by US labor law and diminished workplace social capital it is difficult to see a path to a persistent increase in union density that is not concomitant with a rewiring of workplace networks and a transformation of American labor law.

- Seems tough, but the silver lining is that any such transformation would start with a rise in public support.

- Which is exactly what we're seeing now.