Worcester Business Journal

14 Worcester Business Journal | November 8, 2021 | wbjournal.com Email circulation@wbjournal.com for more information. WBJ Purchase a group subscription for your team or entire organization. Get access to WBJ for your entire team. 0 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% '36 '41 '47 '48 '53 '57 '58 '59 '61 '62 '63 '65 '67 '72 '78 '79 '81 '85 '86 '91 '97 '99 '01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 '13 '14 '15 '16 '17 '18 '19 '20 '21 Support for unions (Percent) 72% 68% 48% 75% Public support for unions Gallup has conducted national surveys since 1936 to gauge how many people approve of unions. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics National union membership, by race Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Union Race/ethnicity membership rate Black 12.3% White 10.7% Asian 8.9% Hispanic 9.8% and public favor for labor unions reaches new highs, experts and labor groups say they expect to see an increase in labor action in and around the region, either in the form of more strikes, union- ization efforts, and/or other collective bargaining efforts. Unique moment A September poll from the Wash- ington, D.C. survey firm Gallup, Inc. reported 68% of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest that figure has been since 1965. Gallup has tracked public approval for unions since 1936, including annual check-ins since 2001. At the same time, 83% of respondents indicated no one in their household was currently part of a labor union. "It's a really interesting moment, and sort of unique in terms of workers start- ing to realize that they have more power than they've had in a long time, I think, in terms of coming up against man- agement and fighting for what workers need on the job," said Weinbaum. A Labor Action Tracker tool from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in New York indicates seven strikes have taken place in Massachusetts since the beginning of the calendar year, includ- ing at Saint Vincent. Others include an 80-person strike among Teamsters members at Coca-Cola Bottling Com- pany of Southeastern New England, Inc. in Westborough, which lasted two weeks at the end of March and con- cerned employee seniority rights. Additional strikes in-state included a 111-day strike among United Steel- workers at an Allegheny Technologies facility in New Bedford, a seven-day strike among MNA members at the VNA of Boston, a three-day strike by the Harvard Graduate Students Union, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers, a one-day strike among International Alliance of eatrical Stage Employees members at North Shore Music eatre in Beverly, as well as a one-day strike at Williamstown eatre Festival in Williamstown. Weinbaum said she would expect to see more labor actions – including strikes and organizing – in the region and across the country moving forward. No particular industry appears more ripe than another, she said, pointing to developments in tech, health care, manufacturing, and media. A January report from the U.S. Bu- reau of Labor Statistics reported a slight increase in union membership density in the workforce in 2020, with 10.8% of workers being union members, bolstered by a significant decline in the number of wage and salary workforce overall. at 10.8% figure is a half per- centage point higher than the year prior, although the actual number of workers belonging to unions was down 2.2%. e year prior, when the economy was more stable, BLS reported a union membership rate of 10.3%,which was 0.2 percentage points lower than the year before. In 1983, the first year BLS has comparable data, the union mem- bership rate was 20.1%. But unions aren't the only mechanism through which employees bargain or implement work stoppages, Weinbaum said. She and other researchers in her field are also keeping tabs on non-union workplaces where employees negotiate and/or threaten to quit over working conditions. Such incidents don't neces- sarily show up in statistics or get press attention, she said. "at's real evidence that the balance of power is shiing," Weinbaum said. Saint Vincent example With all of this attention on labor actions, Massachusetts AFL-CIO Presi- dent Steven Tolman emphasized strikes are considered a last resort for union members. "Nobody wants to go on strike," Tolman said. Tolman, who is in his 11th year as president of labor organization, which is a national federation of labor unions maintaining state federations and local labor councils, said he's hopeful increased support for unions, as well as national legislative efforts to codify increased organizing protections, like the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021 in Congress, which passed in the House earlier this year but not the Senate, will result in more workplaces organizing. Membership in unions, whose work- ers on average make more money than non-union workers, may be increas- ingly attractive as workers fight for higher wages and certain benefits, like pensions, also known as defined benefit plans, becoming decreasingly common. (401k plans, in contrast, are also known as defined contribution plans.) Accord- ing to BLS, 15% of workers nationwide have access to a retirement plan that includes a pension as part of the model. "People are seeing that those types of jobs don't exist," Tolman said. "Every- one wants you to work on a handshake." At Saint Vincent, though, the nurses' strike largely hinged on patient-to- nurse staffing ratios. Despite the continued tussle over whether striking nurses will be allowed to return to their previous positions, MNA Direc- tor of Public Communications David Schildmeier said the nurses successfully negotiated agreements on a number of big-ticket demands, including those Continued from previous page

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