Who wants to join a union? A growing number of Americans

The following article by Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management, Work and Organization Studies Co-Director MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research, MIT Sloan School of Management; Duanyl Yang, PhD. Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Erin L. Kelly, Loan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies Professor; Work and Organization Studies MIT Sloan School of Management and Will Kimball, Ph.D. Student, MIT Sloan School of Management, was posted on the Conversation website August 30, 2018:

Only 10.7 percent of American workers belong to a union today, approximately half as many as in 1983. That’s a level not seen since the 1930s, just before passage of the labor law that was supposed to protect workers’ right to organize.

Yet American workers have not given up on unions. When we conducteda nationally representative survey of the workforce with the National Opinion Research Corporation, we found interest in joining unions to be at a four-decade high.

Four times higher

The results obtained from nearly 4,000 respondents show that 48 percent – nearly half of nonunionized workers – would join a union if given the opportunity to do so.

View the complete article here.