During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised to be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Action is urgently necessary. In 1983, 20 percent of workers in the United States were union members; in 2020, that’s down to about 10.8 percent. Among employees in the private sector, the decline was even more precipitous: from 17 to 7 percent. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute and Brookings attribute the drop in union membership, along with globalization and automation, as a significant factor in wage stagnation and inequality, with the largest impact on lower income workers.
Approval of labor unions, it is worth noting, is the highest it has been since 2003. In a Gallup poll conducted in 2020, 65 percent of respondents (comprised of 83 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Independents, and 45 percent of Republicans) expressed a positive view.