From today’s Texas Public Radio:
From Amazon workers on Staten Island, N.Y., to Starbucks staff on UT’s West Campus, organized labor movements have been gaining steam across the country. A Gallup poll last year found 68% of Americans support unions, once on the decline in the U.S.
Many factors have contributed to workers’ recent desires to unionize, including unsafe working conditions during the pandemic; pay that doesn’t keep up with soaring inflation rates; and an increased focus on social justice and civil rights issues.
“There are things that we, in our daily work lives, take for granted that have arisen because of unions,” said Michael Z. Green, a labor law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law. “Like a five-day workweek instead of a seven-day workweek and payment for health care benefits by employers. Those kinds of things have arisen in the workplace because of the efforts of unions to provide better working conditions for employees.”
And yet, Texas ranked among the 10 states with the lowest rates of union membership in 2020. In fact, since 1989, when state data became available, union membership rates in Texas have consistently been below the U.S. average.
As you sift through the news about labor unions popping up all around, we’re here to clear up a few questions about how they work in Texas.
Read the complete story here.