CHARLOTTE, N.C. — According to a new Gallup poll, 71% of Americans now approve of labor unions, hitting a 57-year high.
Gallup's poll, which collected data during the month of August, comes on the heels of recent highly publicized labor union victories at corporations such as Starbucks, Chipotle, Trader Joe's and Amazon. According to the National Labor Relations Board, the amount of union election petitions filed in the first half of 2021 increased 57%.
Union membership is highest among production and front-line workers where about 20% of them participate in a union.
When it comes to unions in North Carolina and South Carolina though, the Carolinas have the lowest union participation rates in the country.
A mere 2.6% of North Carolina workers are union members, while South Carolina's number is even lower at 1.7%.
Unions as a political tool
This Labor Day, President Joe Biden is emphasizing the growing popularity of unions by attending Labor Day festivities in Milwaukee, in another key swing state, Wisconsin, before traveling to Pittsburgh for that city's parade.
The White House says Biden will celebrate “the dignity of American workers.” The unofficial start of fall, Labor Day also traditionally kicks off political crunch time, with campaigns scrambling to excite voters ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8. That's when control of the House and Senate, as well some of the country's top governorships, will be decided.
Monday will see Biden return to another theme that was a centerpiece of his 2020 campaign, that labor unions burnished the middle class, which built and strengthened modern American society.
Endorsements from key unions helped Biden overcome disastrous early finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire to win the Democratic primary, and eventually the White House. He has since continued to praise labor unions — even though many voters without college degrees, many working class, remain among Trump's strongest bloc of supporters.
Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2-million-member Service Employees International Union, called Biden championing unions heading into the midterms “critical” and said that the labor movement must “mobilize in battlegrounds across the country to ensure that working people turn out.”
“We’re really excited about the president speaking directly to workers about if he had the opportunity, he’d join a union,” Henry said. She added: “This president has signaled which side he’s on. And he’s on the side of working people. And that matters hugely.”
Biden, meanwhile, has a personal history with Pittsburgh's Labor Day parade, which is among the nation's largest. He attended the 2015 installment as vice president and returned in 2018.
Why do we celebrate Labor Day?
In the late 1800s, the average person worked 12-hour days, 7-days a week just to make ends meet.
Sometimes, kids as young as five would work in factories and mines. The working conditions were extremely unsafe.
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Then labor unions formed. They organized strikes and called employers to give them better hours and pay.
On Sept. 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march in New York City. It's considered the first labor day parade in US history.
Eventually, congress followed suit and passed an act making Labor Day a holiday. President Grover Cleveland officially signed it into law in June of 1894.
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