The American workplace is seeing a collision of competing interests in Chicago and across the country.
It’s happening in traditional labor strongholds like manufacturing and in service-sector jobs not known for rebellious workers — mostly with the involvement of a union.
It’s most apparent in high-profile disputes such as the ongoing United Auto Workers’ surgical strike against certain plants of Ford, GM and Stellantis, including Ford’s factory on the South Side.
Prominent examples include the nearly five-month Hollywood writers’ strike and the Teamsters’ tense stare-down with United Parcel Service that produced a deal before its Aug. 1 strike deadline that union leaders called historic. Health care giant Kaiser Permanente settled a three-day strike that idled about 75,000 workers, mostly on the West Coast.
Other disputes have had an impact in Chicago. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, best known for representing government workers, rallied staff at Chicago museums and cultural institutions, winning representation votes like a bowler knocking down tenpins.
Organizing and mobilizing have gone on throughout the Chicago area with nurses and other health care employees, graduate teaching assistants, cannabis store crews, baristas and retail associates.
Workers sense that trends are at their backs, said Pasquale Gianni, an attorney for the Teamsters Joint Council 25, which represents about 100,000 people across northern Illinois and northwest Indiana. For one thing there’s an economy with low unemployment — 3.8% nationally and 4.1% in Illinois — and about 1.5 job openings for every available worker, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“With all the strikes, it’s shown a shift in the balance of power,” Gianni said. “Sometimes, you need to pull a strike once in a while. It makes companies more serious about coming to the table.”
Gallup’s annual poll of Americans’ attitudes toward organized labor show about two-thirds of respondents view unions positively, a level last seen around 1970.
“The public is in favor of working people taking a great step forward,” Gianni said.
‘Terms and conditions’
The National Labor Relations Board has seen its business boom. The federal agency has two main jobs: oversee workplace votes that decide whether a union has bargaining rights and adjudicate charges of labor law violations.
The agency recorded 2,594 petitions for union representation in its latest fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, a 58% increase from 2021. The number of unfair labor practices charges has grown steadily.
Michael Sullivan, a Chicago attorney with the firm Goldberg Kohn, said he sees “some permanence” in the data pointing to more labor activism.
“This will continue because young people are more focused on the terms and conditions of employment, and rightly so,” he said.
Sullivan, who advises employers, said companies need to focus on workplace issues.
“We counsel employers that this trend is real, it’s not a flash in the pan,” he said.
Managers, he said, “should be cognizant and self-critical without waiting until somebody comes in from the outside and tells workers they need third-party representation.”
For all the sound and fury on the labor front, its net effect is unknown. Unions’ overall share of the workforce was 10.1% in 2022 and declining, about half the rate of 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That percentage is swelled by union predominance in government work. In the private sector, the share of union jobs was 6% in 2022.
The number of union members overall has grown but not as fast as jobs in the rest of the economy.
“It takes a lot of new members to raise the union density,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Challenges with organizing
The new age poses challenges for anxious employees and groups that would speak for them. Experts said much of the recent organizing is driven by younger workers in jobs that are relatively low-paid and tenuous. They have enthusiasm but need education about how to organize and what unions can and cannot do.
In some cases, workers have presented grievances to management without protection from a union.
A largely immigrant workforce at the El Milagro tortilla company chose the independent route to win raises and better schedules, but they still lack security of a union contract.
Some Amazon employees in Chicago and elsewhere have tried that with limited success. A target for Teamsters organizing, Amazon has posed a particular challenge, Gianni said. Its warehouse employees have high turnover and are under steady surveillance by a company with vast resources for fighting, he said.
Others in the pro-labor camp wonder why it’s taken so long for workers to become combative. Elliott Gorn, professor of American urban history at Loyola University Chicago, pointed to data showing the growing disparity between groups at the highest and lowest income scales.
As company profits and CEO salaries balloon, many workers have been pushed to an economic edge. Gorn said the pandemic worsened economic inequality.
“It’s a real privilege to be able to work from home,” but not everyone can do that, especially people who deal directly with the public, he said.
Employers have been caught flatfooted by the labor push, Gorn said, but much of U.S. labor law is on their side.
“Business has had decades to learn how to resist unionization,” he said.
Unions historically have hurt their own cause with corruption and leadership “sclerosis,” Gorn said.
The final test isn’t whether fired-up workers stage protests and walkouts but whether they can win strong contracts.
It’s a hard lesson Starbucks workers have learned in a fight that’s now two years old against a resistant employer.
Win or lose, Bruno said unions will continue attracting worker interest.
“The disquiet we’re seeing is likely going to make them respond to an institution that gives them power and voice,” he said.
