What the future holds for labor unions

Union membership declined last year, while union density rose by 0.5% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. AFL-CIO Chief Economist William Spriggs joins Yahoo Finance Live to weigh in on the Bureau of Labor Statistics latest findings on union workers and break down how Biden can help the U.S. labor movement amid pandemic.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Well, data out from the Bureau of Labor statistics on Friday shows that 14.3 million American workers belonged to unions last year. That's a rate of 10.8%, which is a bit of an increase from 2019 in part because there were fewer workers overall in the labor force right now. To talk about this, we're joined by William Spriggs. He's AFL-CIO Chief Economist and also a professor in the Economics Department at Howard University.

Thank you so much for joining us, William. So as you look at these numbers, and you also look at the political environment that we have seen over the past several years, what do you think is sort of the primary driver for individuals in union membership at this point?

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, this was a very bad year for workers in the United States because of the pandemic, both in terms of lives lost. A large share of the workers who were lost were because we didn't put in place occupational safety and health regulations. So that was the bad side. Those workers who were in unions were more likely to keep their job.

And so what this data tells us is there's something else that unions do. It's not just negotiate higher wages or benefits. But it's to provide a forum in which employers and employees can work through tough situations. So the data seem to point to having that level of cooperation makes it easier for companies to adapt to these kind of weird situations we've been living through.

MYLES UDLAND: You know, William, I'm curious about your view on the future of union membership in the US. And I think about it through the lens of the media, where we have seen a number of organizations within the last couple of years form unions. And we've seen some organizations have contentious clashes with their managements as they try to organize their workforces.

And I'm curious, you know, based on the folks you talk to, the students you have in your class, if it seems that young people today kind of see the benefits of union membership perhaps in a way that their parents were sort of taught to not see. And, you know, we saw that obviously for several decades here.

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Well, there's definitely a swing up in trust and the way that people view unions. And there have been a number of successes. The most noticed ones, as you mentioned, are in information technology. And those who are in the media have been a big source. And we now have the Apple Workers Union, which has been the Alphabet Workers Union, which is organizing Google in cooperation with this Communication Workers of America.

And we've seen these attempts at Amazon as well. So I think, you know, we've pushed American workers as far as we can. And now workers feel they need to fight back. And I think people are seeing unions as a way for them to have a voice at the table.

JULIE HYMAN: I am curious, though, if that's the case, sir, what will have changed? I mean because, to your point, we have seen what gains workers have had, whether it's in pay or paid sick leave or other types of treatments, has been really painstaking it feels like over the past several decades. And that's-- I don't know if that's a failure of unions. I don't know if that's a failure of government or all of the above. But I don't know what the best way forward is in terms of making progress on [AUDIO OUT].

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: So it has to do with-- yeah, well, it has to do with our labor laws. Our labor laws work only if management and workers respect each other. And over the last 40 years, management has been very disrespectful of American workers and has gone with full force against the right to organize. And the law has too many loopholes in it that make it impossible for workers to organize without that level of respect.

So for that reason, President Biden has said that he will support the protection of the Right to Organize Act, called the PRO Act that the House passed last year. And this would rewrite our rules. It would modernize our rules to recognize that management in the United States has just decided that workers don't have the right to organize. And so this levels the playing field.

In many ways, it rolls back a lot of the things that were done in the 1940s to weaken unions and union organizing. And it really is essential. The workers who are successfully organizing now are highly skilled. So they have a lot of leverage against their employers because of their skill level. But we need to have that protection when it comes to other workers, like those workers at Walmart and Amazon who are trying to organize.

MYLES UDLAND: All right, interesting conversation. We will have to leave it there. William Spriggs, the Chief Economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor in the Economics Department at Howard University, thank you so much for joining the program this morning.

WILLIAM SPRIGGS: Thank you for having me.