16:04 – The Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) team drafted a gameplan to address ‘right-to-work’ laws in the states”

18:17 – Rising inequality is the root of affordability problems
Ben’s referring to the Productivity-pay gap

19:22 – Rust Belt Union Blues by Lainey Newman and Theda Sckocpol adds a lot of context and texture to what Celine just talked about

21:21 – The chart Jen is referring to (we at EPI call it THE Chart) can be found on our Unions page

22:59 – Characters in the novel Union Made, talk about “The Chart.”

26:30 – U.S. employers spend more than $1.5 billion annually on union avoidance

30:29 – The echoes of slavery: Recognizing the racist origins of the agricultural and domestic worker exclusion from the National Labor Relations Act

30:53 – Data show anti-union ‘right-to-work’ laws damage state economies

31:28 – The latest public-sector analysis –Stronger collective bargaining laws will benefit all Virginians

31:55 – State solutions to the U.S. worker rights crisis: Rights to unionize and collectively bargain

35:57 – see how the campaign to suppress workers’ rights is unfolding with EPI’s preemption map

38:38 – More info on the biggest union-buster in U.S. history

45:18 – Stronger collective bargaining laws will benefit all Virginians

46:01 – Collective bargaining gains build for fire fighters across the South

46:15 – Community benefits agreements can turn Southern manufacturing investments into good jobs and shared prosperity

55:02 – The most recent EPI report on unionization Workers’ resolve drives increase in unionization in 2025

55:43 – New Law Makes Establishing Retaliation Claims Easier For California Employees

This is the transcript of the July 15, 2026 EPI webinar, generated from the event’s captions and lightly formatted for readability. It may contain minor transcription errors — refer to the recording for the original audio.

0:05 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Earlier today, EPI, alongside AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, released a major new report that answers a really big question. What would America look like if we tripled union membership? And the findings are striking for workers, for the economy, and for our democracy. The report includes state-by-state breakdowns, and also we have a foreword in it by Robert Reich, and I am thrilled to be joined by three of the report’s brilliant authors. Celine McNicholas, Director of Policy and General Counsel at EPI, Jennifer Sherer, Deputy Director of EPI’s EARN Network and Director of the State Worker Power Initiative, and Ben Zipperer, Senior Economist at EPI. So, let’s start with where we are. Last year, nearly 15 million workers, or 10% of all wage and salary workers, belonged to a union. And that’s a slight uptick from 2024, and it means that right now, there are more union members in the United States than there have been in 16 years. But here’s the gap. If every worker who wanted a union actually had one, union membership wouldn’t be 10%, it would be 48.7%. And can you imagine the power that workers and their unions would have then? And that is exactly what frightens corporate CEOs. Our vision of tripling union membership is not a pipe dream. It tracks with record high public support for unions, and so I am going to share a few polling numbers. First is 68% of people have a favorable view of unions, and when you look at the generations, majorities across every generation support union, from Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Z, And among young adults, 72% of them support unions, which is the highest of any group. Unions have support that crosses party lines, and 60% of Americans say that the decline in union density has been bad for the country, including 52% of young Republicans and 82% of young Democrats. So, tripling union membership is not a moonshot. It is just delivering what workers already want. and what the public already supports. So today, we’re going to dig into our vision for a country where at least one in 3 workers belong to a union. We’re going to talk about what’s at stake, what it would look like, what and who stands in the way, and what it’s going to take to get there. So again, Jen already mentioned this. Thanks so much to the folks who sent in questions in advance. We’ve woven some of those into today’s conversation, and we will hopefully have enough time at the end. for more questions. So let’s get into it. Ben, first question, everybody wants to know what this would mean for them. How would tripling union membership impact regular workers?

3:17 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

Yeah, so we show in the report that we released today that you outlined that if union membership rose by 20 percentage points from 10% today to 30%, it would increase hourly pay by nearly 15% for the typical or median worker. What that means for a full-time, full-year worker earning a middle-class wage, they would have their annual pay rise by more than $7,700. Unions… typically raise wages for the middle and the bottom end of the workforce. So, you know, assuming that that wage increase applies to the bottom 80% of the workforce, that would raise combined annual compensation by $1.2 trillion. That’s every year. And that would reverse one third of the increase in inequality that we’ve experienced since 1979. That’s real money. It’s larger than the Pentagon’s 2025 budget, and it would provide an enormous relief to families struggling to afford a decent standard of living. Just as one kind of clear example, the median annual cost of mortgage payment these days is a bit over $18,000. So an additional $7,700 a year, that would cover more than 40% of those mortgage expenses. What’s also important to realize is that this extra $7,700 a year, that’s a permanent increase in income. Tripling union density would provide that income boost year after year. So someone working full time over a 35 year career, that’s conservatively $270,000 a year in today’s dollars, even if they never received any additional pay increases above the rate of inflation. That’s a life-changing increase to a family raising young kids and eventually sending them to college.

5:12 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Great. Thanks so much, Ben. And I just saw a note come into the chat, somebody asking for a fact sheet. We will do that. That is a fantastic idea. So following up on those really eye-popping numbers, Ben, are these increases evenly distributed or would some workers see a little more lift than others?

5:29 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

That’s a very important point. Unions tend to raise pay, like I said, for those at the bottom more than at the top. And so what that means is that workers who have been discriminated against and have fewer opportunities to advance and see pay raises, they often benefit the most from unions at a workplace. In particular, that means that unions tend to boost wages more for Black and Hispanic workers than for white workers. This is a pattern that economic research has consistently found. And it’s why unions for decades have been an important force for racial justice. So were we to triple union membership, like we talk about in the report, that would close racial wage gaps by more than one third. In 2025, the typical Black or Hispanic worker was paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to the median white worker. That’s about a wage gap of 23%. But tripling union density because it would raise wages more for Black and Hispanic workers, it would close that gap by more than one third.

6:36 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Wow. Okay. So, Ben, in addition to the financial boost for workers and the reduction in the racial wage gap, were there any other economic benefits that your research found?

6:50 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

One of the bigger benefits that we looked at is better access to health insurance. So we found that tripling union density would dramatically decrease the number of non-elderly people without medical insurance, causing that number to fall by about 25%. The basic story here is that in addition to raising wages, unions improve access to other forms of compensation like employer provided health insurance. And in the US, Health insurance is one of the most important benefits unions collectively bargain to maintain and to improve. Also, in addition to that, unions are a major advocate for increased public benefits like Medicaid and related state level programs. So unions increase both publicly and privately provided health insurance. Low union density states and areas of the country, they can often have double digit uninsurance rates. For example, in Texas, where union membership is really low. half the national average, it has an uninsurance rate about twice the national average. But in places with higher union density, people are much more likely to have employer provided or publicly provided health insurance. So by tripling union density, we would increase access to health insurance, lowering uninsurance rates significantly in places that currently have low union density.

8:11 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thanks so much, Ben. I am gonna turn to Jen Sherer to talk, to dig in to what is happening in the states. And I’ve seen some questions in the chat come in on this. So Jen, what did you find in states, with states that have a higher union density?

8:28 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

So, in addition to what Ben has covered in terms of wages and health insurance access, this report details that even beyond some of these economic factors, high union density correlates very strongly with many widespread public benefits to workers and communities at large. So in addition, just as a couple of examples, states with high union density tend to have better funded public education systems and more robust social safety nets than states with lower union density. So what does that mean in practical sense? The union density of the state you live in is unavoidably affecting not only your wages and your state’s economy, but also the health well-being and the civic or educational opportunities that are available to you and your family. So workers living in states with higher union density have greater access to health insurance has been covered. In part because those are states that are more likely to have expanded Medicaid, but they also have better track records on things like ensuring that workers actually receive unemployment benefits that they’re eligible for if they’re laid off from a job. States with higher union density spend more per pupil on public education. And maybe most importantly, and I know we’re going to get into this even more deeply in a bit, states with higher union density have a stronger, more robust democracy. This is based on data showing that states with higher union density end up with a more active electorate. And fewer restrictions on the right to vote across the board nationally. So, increasing union membership across all states, and I know we’re getting some questions about this in the chat that I’m sure we’re going to come back to later, especially in states with historically low density, is really critical to transforming economic conditions, but also the health and well-being of workers and communities overall.

10:15 Naomi Walker (EPI)

So this next question is gonna go to Celine, and we just heard from Jen talking about the benefits for communities, and Ben’s talked about the impact on individual workers and the economy. Is that the limit, or are there broader gains to be had from tripling union membership?

10:32 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

Sure. So I’ll pick up where Jen left off. There are absolutely broader gains. And I think one of the main gains that we wanted to highlight in the report, and I think really bears consideration here, is that unions are good for democracy. They’re democratic institutions themselves, so they really serve as schools of democracy. They expose members to activism. Members vote for their leadership. They vote on a contract, they serve on committees and as stewards helping to administer their contracts. And research, as Jen sort of indicated, shows consistently that union members use these skills in their civic lives. And that translates to union members are more likely to vote than the general public. And voter turnout, as Jen mentioned, is consistently higher in states with higher union densities. And I think it’s really important as more and more states, unfortunately, are trying to make it harder for their residents, particularly disproportionately residents of color, to vote. They’re enacting, you know, measures that make it harder and harder to access the franchise. States with higher union density are not following suit. Those are the states that are essentially protecting democracy and protecting the right to vote. So in our current political system, even beyond that, where political influence is really closely tied to money, unions are really the main countervailing force in that system. They bring working people’s voices into policy debates. They help build coalitions that challenge what would otherwise really be a policy agenda that serves, unfortunately, only the wealthy. And I just say in closing here, consider that unions have been critical forces to win each and every minimum wage increase ever passed, whether at the state, local, or federal level. They’ve been instrumental in winning anti-discrimination protections for workers and family medical leave protections for workers. And these are all things that union workers themselves have won as a matter of right in their own contract. So they win it for themselves, and then they work in a larger democracy to win it for all of us. And so it’s hard to sort of overstate the gains to, you know, to really increasing union membership and union density.

12:38 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thank you, Celine. I love those examples at the end about how unions not only fight for their own members, but for other workers as well. Ben, I want to dig in a little bit on inequality. Inequality has risen dramatically in recent decades. a lot of pressure that people… workers are feeling are the pressure to afford a middle-class lifestyle. So, can you talk us through what happened?

13:07 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

That’s absolutely right. Affording a decent life is difficult in the United States, and the main reason why is that there has been a huge transfer of income away from the middle class towards those at the very top. The typical worker today is almost twice as productive as they were in the late 1970s, but since then, their wages have failed to track that productivity increase. And that differs compared to earlier decades when union density was much higher and when pay came much closer to tracking productivity growth. The consequences for workers and affording a decent standard of living because of that are really staggering. A full-time, full-year worker last year earned about $53,000 a year at the annual median hourly wage, but they would have earned over $76,000 a year if their pay had tracked productivity since 1979. That wage suppression. is directly related to the very successful attacks on unions over the last four to five decades, because by weakening unions, our country has eliminated one of the major sources of worker bargaining power that previously compelled employers to share productivity gains much more broadly, rather than enriching a group of highly paid executives and CEOs. Instead, because you Union density has been low. We’ve been in a situation where a lot of money wasn’t paid to the typical or middle class worker and instead went to the very top. Since 1979, earnings for the bottom 90% of households grew just 44%, but earnings for the top 0.1% grew by 354%. Were we to triple union density? That money would instead be distributed much more widely, reversing about one-third of that rise in inequality. A large enough union presence can be a major force in checking the rise in inequality and ensuring that workers’ wages are not suppressed.

15:09 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thanks, Ben. Jen, so Ben touched on this a little bit about how unions help reduce income inequality. Can you add a little bit to that and talk about some of the historic comparisons?

15:22 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

Yeah, that’s right. And EPI has for a long time been tracking this growing increase in inequality across our economy that, as Ben said, reflects a really massive shift of earnings away from low and middle income workers. And it’s coincided directly with the decades-long assault on workers and their unions. I think the second chart that has maybe been shared in the chat and, is another EPI, graphic that shows two lines. The one in blue shows union membership over time. The red line is the share of national income going to the top 10% of households, so in other words, it’s a measure of how concentrated that, income is just at the top at certain points in history. So, in a nutshell, this chart is just showing that by bringing workers’ collective power to the bargaining table in prior decades, unions were able to win better wages and benefits for working people, which also reduced income inequality overall as a result. And of course, that trend has gone the other direction in more recent decades. So, you know, folks have noted that in the early 50s, when union membership is at that historic high point. Unions are at a point where they’re able to set wage standards for entire industries and occupations, giving workers the power to demand their fair share of corporate profits, and that decreases the overall inequality in our economy. In the second half of the 20th century. that changes. And so I know what we’re going to have the rest of our time focused on is what are some of the, you know, policy choices and opportunities we have today to start making those trend lines go in a different direction in the future.

17:03 Naomi Walker (EPI)

And thanks, Jen. And I think before we start digging in on the policy side, I want to turn it over to Ben. I think we understand that unions raise pay for their members, but can you explain how they raise pay for non-union workers too?

17:19 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

Right. Everyone understands, like you mentioned, that unions raise pay for their members. The ability to collectively bargain at workplace levels the playing field between union members and their employers, and it allows unions to negotiate for better pay at the workplace, among other things. But also, unions boost wages for non-union workers, too, because they change pay standards. An economic research has demonstrated that these wage spillovers for non-union workers from union workers are substantial and they grow the higher union density is. There’s basically kind of three mechanisms that cause wage increases for non-union workers when there is higher union density. First is that When you’re raising pay at a given workplace that’s unionized, unionized firms, they become more attractive places to work relative to non-union firms. And that indirectly through the market pressures non-union firms to raise wages because otherwise they’d face recruitment and retention problems. Secondly, when there is greater union presence in a given industry or a given occupation. And the prospect of a newly unionized workplace is a real possibility. Non-union employers will raise wages to preemptively avoid workers from forming a union at their non-union workplace. Finally, the third thing is that Unions are, as we talked about earlier, unions are a major force in advocating for better public policies, in particular, progressive taxes and social benefits. This indirectly raises the pay of both union and non-union workers, because when taxes on top incomes are higher. Corporate executives have less incentive to redistribute income away from workers and toward themselves, because much of that higher pay for the already rich would be taxed away. So for all of those reasons, unions raise wages for the bulk of the workforce, not just union workers.

19:26 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thanks so much, Ben. And I’ll just note in the chat, some folks are putting some reading recommendations, including one of our participants, Eric Lotke, who has a novel out that has characters talking about the charts that Ben mentioned. and Jen have mentioned, so I am excited to check that out. So, Celine, you know, tripling union membership would raise pay, strengthen communities, build a more robust democracy, and we all see those benefits as being really clear, and the public overwhelmingly sees those benefits as being really clear. But can you help us understand why union membership has been stuck at such low levels for so long?

20:11 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

Sure. I think, you know, this is a relatively easy question to answer in that there’s really one main reason that more workers in the U.S. do not have a union, and that is really that current policy, current law does not provide a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining. Workers who win union representation and then go on to successfully win a contract really do so in spite of the law, not because it truly a pathway to those gains. And that’s a huge failing. And corporations have really long exploited the law’s weakness. And it’s given rise really to an entire industry of union avoidance consultants and union avoidance law firms. Here at EPI, we’ve done a lot of research into those industries. And we know that companies spend roughly $1.7 billion billion each year on union avoidance business. So just think about that. Companies spend close to $2 billion each year to suppress workers’ rights to a union and collective bargaining. And the law allows that, really frankly, invites it. It’s certainly not the way it should work. But when you think about all of these gains and what it would mean to a restructuring of the economy, you Essentially, those gains are being spent to avoid, you know, paying workers their fair share. Unions would require that. They really are the best private sector mechanism for workers to, you know, claw back some of those, the productivity gains that they participate in. So unfortunately, it really is a failing of our current policy and current law that I think is the greatest contributing factor to that mismatch of. desire and what actually workers are able to win in their workplace.

21:54 Naomi Walker (EPI)

And so one of the questions that came in early was, is there, can we waive our magic wand? If we had to waive our magic wand, what’s the one policy? What’s the silver bullet? Is there a silver bullet, Celine, and what are the changes, that need to happen in order to get to triple union membership?

22:14 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

Sure. So I wish I could say that this is an easy answer and that there is a silver bullet or a magic wand that can be waved. But as we state in the report, there really is no one policy change that would lead to triple union membership. But there are several key policies, many of which have bipartisan support that would help reform the sort of broken system that I just talked about. So I’ll just highlight a few. The law should give public sector workers the right to collective bargaining. We certainly look at that and the potential impacts in state union membership in the report. And there is a bill in Congress now, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would give public workers that right. And it includes an enforcement structure to ensure that states and localities give them that right. There is a bill that provides really a comprehensive set of reforms that would govern private sector workers. That’s also introduced this Congress and has bipartisan support. That’s the Protecting the Right to Organize, or commonly referred to as the PRO Act. And, you know, I guess I would just sort of say, at core, any and all policies that make it easier for workers to choose a union in their workplace and then bargain with their employer successfully and reach a contract should be on the table, should be considered. And, you know, I think that’s really why we tried to offer some new policy ideas that build on, you know, many of these other, they’re complementary to the policy reforms that we’re talking about here. And they are really aimed at centering collective bargaining as a corrective to, you know, the affordability issues that Ben talked about in his remarks. And I would just sort of say that, you know, we know that where individual bargaining is not working at a firm, when you have a ratio of, you know, CEO pay to typical worker pay that exceeds 101, that individual leverage is not enabling workers to gain their fair share. And so we think, you know, mandating collective bargaining in some instances is really required and would be helpful to correct and also to grow the union movement, which has benefits across so many other aspects, not just wages and working conditions.

24:31 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thanks, Celine. And Jen, I would like to hear from you. What can state policymakers do to improve union membership?

24:40 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

Yeah, so we described earlier that workers are experiencing really different economic and social realities depending on where they live. In a high versus low density state. So, it’s not surprising that these big variations in union density by state are the result of some very big policy differences among states. And so, in the new report, we take a look at the impact of two policies in particular. first anti-union so-called right-to-work laws that are on the books in 27 states, and we look at the impact of limitations on collective bargaining rights that public sector workers face in 24 states. So the fact that states are even able to limit or deny some workers’ union rights reflects some of what Celine was, referring to, you know, the long-standing failure in our federal labor law, and the failure of Congress to, update it and fix many of the weaknesses. So many workers, for example, have never been protected by federal labor law at all due to Jim Crow era exclusions. that left out and carved out people by occupation. Domestic workers, agricultural workers, and public sector workers have never been covered fully under federal law. So that leaves their union rights dependent on states, and means we have these huge, uneven disparities across the country. And then furthermore, Congress in 1947 made big amendments to our federal labor law. Long list of bad things that happened in those amendments, but it included, allowing states to continue passing laws, so-called right-to-work laws, that limit the labor rights of private sector workers. So, workers in the U.S. are experiencing big disparities in how difficult it is, or whether it is even legally a viable pathway for them to form or sustain a union, depending on where they live. what their occupation is. So the new report looks at the impact and models, and I think here’s where I want to have people, you know, try to digest some kind of eye-popping results. that we were able to model the impact of removing just these two barriers to unionization at the state level. So in other words, if we got rid of all right to work laws in 27 states and removed limitations on public sector collective bargaining so that all states had a clear legal pathway for state and local government workers to unionize. That impact alone would increase union density nationally from its current level. To 14.4%. So, an almost 50% increase from where we’re at right now. So for workers in one of the 27 states that have one or both of these anti-union policies in place, we also model the wage impacts. And estimate that the median worker wage would increase by up to $4,900 a year. So states have a lot of important roles to play here, and there are a lot of opportunities to make improvements. Even if we’re not at the point where we have all of the long list of important federal reforms that we need.

27:39 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Yeah, Jen, those numbers are eye-popping, and I wonder if you could dig in a little bit more about why state policy is so important, given the political moment that we’re in right now.

27:52 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

Well, I mean, strengthening collective bargaining rights is clearly one of the most powerful policy levers that state elected officials have available to confront the affordability crisis. Reversing anti-union state policies is a really critical first step to righting historical wrongs and addressing persistent racial and gender wage gaps and inequities in our labor market. And the anti-union state policies we focus on in this report particularly, both originate in post-World War II white supremacist backlash and big business backlash against the growth of unions and gains that many Black and women workers had begun to achieve, as unions were growing in strength. So we know that historically these policies were designed to suppress multiracial organizing, limit worker power, and explicitly to try to undermine federal labor law. So it’s really long past time that states remove these restrictions and barriers. It’s also extremely good politics right now for state leaders to prioritize these kinds of reforms at a moment when we know public interest. in and approval for unions is at an all-time high.

28:59 Naomi Walker (EPI)

And so, Jen, you talked about, two big things that states could do, remove right-to-work laws and remove restrictions on, collective bargaining. What else can states do on this?

29:12 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

Yeah, and I think it’s maybe been in the chat, but we do all have an entire separate report on listing the many opportunities for states to help enable more workers to unionize and remove some of these barriers. So, a couple of examples, you know, in addition to public sector workers who don’t have, federal labor law coverage, states We have a lot of room in our country for states to extend collective bargaining rights to, domestic workers, in-home childcare providers, home healthcare workers, farm workers, and gig workers who are not currently being afforded federal labor rights. And states are also actively beginning to pass policies that protect workers’ rights to refuse mandatory anti-union captive audience meetings. I think we’re up to 14 states. Obviously, you know, there are a majority of states still on the list who could take that kind of step and remove some of the obstacles workers face to forming new unions. Other states are beginning to more actively look at policies like extending unemployment insurance eligibility to workers on strike. So again, I really encourage people to look at the other report for a long list of opportunities states have to take action.

30:28 Naomi Walker (EPI)

And so, Celine, I’m going to come to you with this question. In January, God willing, there’s going to be a new Congress that hopefully will be more worker-friendly. What should we tell them to focus on?

30:42 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

Great question. And we should just acknowledge that there is so much wrong. So there’s a ton that could be focused on. But I think the main focus for policymakers really must be to prioritize passing labor law reforms. And as we’ve heard, that’s really essential to addressing the affordability problems that we’re facing. But the reality is that Prioritizing labor reforms, reforms aimed at growing unions and collective bargaining will go a long way to helping address many of the other key policy issues we are facing. So attacks on our democracy. We know that unions do a ton to create and protect vibrant, inclusive, participatory democracy. Health care. We know that unions win their members quality health insurance. and are instrumental in protecting and expanding programs like Medicaid that provide those benefits to millions of children, pregnant women, the elderly, retirement security. Unions help workers win a decent retirement, and then they fight to protect programs like Social Security that ensure that all workers can retire with some dignity. So really, again, here, it’s like it’s hard to overstate the benefits that could flow from prioritizing labor law reform. Unfortunately, it has not been previously, you know, prioritized. Realistically, we understand that, you know, that may require expanding what can be considered under reconciliation or potentially lifting the filibuster for consideration of labor law reform. But those process challenges really cannot be used as an excuse to abandon trying for those policies. They’re rules that Congress created, and I would just keep arguing that Congress can change those rules and do at times to prioritize other issues. And I guess it would just also be remiss, Naomi, not to flag that obviously any and all progress on the front of labor law reform, promoting collective bargaining at the federal level will not only require a new Congress, but a new president, because Trump has expressly promised. to veto the measures that I talked about at the beginning, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act and the PRO Act, to say nothing of sort of his own union busting as president. So, you know, hopefully a new Congress can figure out a way to prioritize these reforms, but I do wanna flag that obviously there is an impediment in the White House as well.

33:10 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Absolutely a very, very big impediment. Okay, Celine, one of the things I want to dig in on is that you mentioned there is some measure of bipartisan support, which is so wild to me, because Republicans have, waged a decades-long war on workers’ rights, both at the national level and at the state level. And so I’m really curious about, like, how do you square their attacks with this newfound interest? And do you think it’s genuine, this interest they’re showing

33:42 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think the proof will really be in whether Republicans push these measures that they’ve in some places endorsed or introduced when they can no longer count on Trump really to serve as the ultimate backstop, that obstacle to any real progress. But, you know, really regardless of the genuineness question, like it is clear that there are a group of Republicans, 20 odd Republicans in the House that have joined Democrats to actually bypass Speaker Johnson and pass bills that, you know, would restore collective bargaining rights to federal workers after Trump took those rights from them. Another group of 20 Republicans did the Same thing again, bypassing Speaker Johnson and Republican leadership to help pass a bill that would ensure that workers can actually win a first contract when they win themselves a union. And, you know, on the genuineness question too, it’s politicians, you know, pay attention to polls, as Chen and you have both sort of touched on, Naomi, like unions have record high favorability in polls. especially among young people, those that’s across party lines. And I think in the most recent Gallup polling, Congress had a 10% approval rating and an 86% disapproval rating. In that same Gallup polling, unions had, as you mentioned, nearly a 70% approval rating, and that is for the fifth consecutive year. So it certainly is not a new concept in politics to champion something that polls well. Particularly when you, Congress, is polling abysmally. So, you know, I think that’s obviously part of it. It’s capitalizing off of popularity. But I do want to be careful not to suggest that Democrats and Republicans occupy the same position on unions and collective bargaining. As you mentioned, Naomi, their records are absolutely distinct over the last several decades. Really, Republicans have battled unions, stood in the way of labor law reform, often explicitly including anti-union policies in their party platform. But it’s also true that many Democrats, despite consistently putting forward a far more pro-union set of policies in their platform, have failed to prioritize real reforms in these areas. And at times they’ve stood in the way as well. So it’s a bipartisan moment. It’s a bipartisan problem. And so hopefully, whether genuine or not, those polls continue to demand a response. And you to see these issues prioritized.

36:24 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thank you, Celine. And I’m gonna give you the last question, but before I do that, we are about to move into questions. And if you’re a participant and you have a question, please for sure put it in the Q&A section. I know there have been some… Questions that have come in the chat, it’s hard for us to see those. So if you put them in the Q&A, it’s easier for us to see. So get your questions ready while we tackle this last question for Celine. And you alluded to some of this, but Celine, what do you think that we need to do to get policymakers to truly support labor?

37:02 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

So really, this is about getting them to support, getting politicians to support labor, not only on the campaign trail, but when they’re actually elected, because we know that they, when they’re running for office, many politicians use rhetoric that is pro-worker, pro-union, even Trump embraced that rhetoric on the campaign trail, and then they sort of abandon when they are in office. And so to me, the real question is, how can we as voters, as activists, as union members or union allies hold elected officials accountable for the promises that they make on the campaign trail. It certainly should not be enough to simply campaign on that rhetoric. But, you know, we have an opportunity in the midterms. We can vote smart. We can push candidates beyond the rhetoric and demand real commitments to vote for the bills that we’ve talked about today. A commitment not to, you know, basically to not let parliamentary procedures stand in the way of an agenda that provides working people with the benefits of collective bargaining, which as we’ve established here, go, you know, far beyond wages and benefits. And lastly, I’ll just say from my personal perspective here, I think we can and should elect more union members to office. That would be one surefire way to help prioritize those issues would be to actually elect people who’ve benefited from it and feel an investment in the system. You’d also, I think, have far more working class voters who are less likely to abandon their principles when then they’re put in office. So I’ll stop there.

38:33 Naomi Walker (EPI)

That was a great way to stop the presentation part of this webinar. We’re going to move into questions. I’m going to give the first question to Jen Sherer, and it’s actually kind of a combination of some of the questions that we’ve seen in the chat. Allison asked, “Can you provide examples of successful campaigns in the state to expand rights to unionize and any analysis on what made them successful?” And I’m kind of gonna combine that with a question that came in. from someone before the webinar started, which was, what is a red state, to do, and are there examples of campaigns that are happening in red states that are illustrative for us? So, Jen, kicking it to you.

39:20 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

Yeah, I think even if we just… For now, look at the two, you know, big state policies that we focus on mostly in the report, and think about expansions of public sector collective bargaining. there have been several in the past few years. Now, I want to be clear, none of these policy changes or policy fights at the state level have been easy, and many of them have been incremental rather than comprehensive, and so we could look at, you know, probably maybe the the really, most, highly publicized example from this past year is Virginia. You know, a southern state, that historically has had an outright ban on public sector collective bargaining until a few years ago when they Partially, just partially lifted that ban for, local governments to opt in. But even that incremental step has allowed, we think, an estimated 80,000 workers to now have a union contract just in the matter of 3 or 4 years. who had a barrier there before. And so it’s a combination of workers were already organizing in local cities, school districts, counties, and are continuing to organize, to put the pressure on, the state to make these reforms. Now, people may know this past year, and for two years in a row, there was a much stronger comprehensive bill that the legislature passed twice now, has been vetoed twice now by two different governors, one Republican, one Democrat, to go back to Celine’s point. about this being a bipartisan issue. But people are not going to be giving up on that issue, because the momentum that, workers organizing both in the public and private sectors in Virginia have been building, is going to continue. So, I think there… many other examples like that, but Virginia might be the most profound one at the moment in terms of the public sector. And on the right to work front, similarly, you know, there was a slate of several states that, after 2010, passed right-to-work laws that had never had them before in, you know, during a wave of Republicans coming into government, state government. Michigan is one of the first of those states that has recently reversed its right-to-work law, and there are discussions underway in almost all of those states, similarly about what it’s going to take, now that people have lived through some of those conditions. We… we give some data from Wisconsin as an example of a state that Imposed a right to work law and the right to work law. repealed its formerly robust collective bargaining system in the last 15 years, and what that has done to decimate the state’s union density. It looks like union density in Wisconsin fell by half during that period of time, as compared to nationally. A very small change in union density overall. So people have lived through these conditions, are preparing to reverse some of those bad policies. And again, I would encourage people to look at the report for lots more, the other report on state campaigns to look for lots more examples or to feel free to also follow up with us if you’re interested in a particular locality or state. And red states are, on the, you know, on this list as well. I know, Naomi, you asked me two questions, and I didn’t fully get to the second one, but I think what we’re seeing in a lot of red southern states and midwestern states Is, people working on the local level in tandem with building momentum for state policy change. So I think one of the questions that came in in advance was from Georgia specifically. And, just to give a very concrete example, firefighters in Atlanta have been working on organizing and finding a pathway to a union contract for several years, which they just achieved this year. Again, it’s a state that does not have a clear, robust statewide framework for public sector collective bargaining, but at the local level, groups like the firefighters are finding a pathway there, and again, building a foundation for eventually, leading up to state reform.

43:43 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thanks so much, Jen. Ben, I am coming to you with a question that came in before the webinar. What percentage of union members are women?

43:55 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

I don’t know the exact number, but it is basically half. So, I think there’s a bit of a… misunderstanding about the current state of the Union, you know, population that they think it is basically white men. And you know, there were times when what that was true, because the workforce mainly reflected white men. But now the workforce and Union membership is much more diverse. So basically, half of Union members are women. It’s something like two-thirds or so of union membership is either female or a person of color. And There actually is some pretty interesting research by scholars about how the unions can sometimes, unions can sometimes play a role in reducing gender wage gaps just like they reduce racial wage gaps. So, for example, when Wisconsin pursued a bunch of anti-union policies and effectively moved away from standardized pay scales in public schools, what that meant was that women no longer, teachers, female teachers no longer saw pay increases, but men did. So the kind of attacks on unions basically increased the gender gap, whereas before, when there was actually a stronger union presence that was able to set pay scales more collectively, gender wage discrimination was much more muted.

45:37 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thank you so much, Ben. I am going to throw the next question. I think it’s going to go back to Jen. I think she’s the one that can answer this, but Celine, please jump in. This came in earlier. How did Taft-Hartley get passed in the first place?

46:00 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

So, Taft-Hartley, to remind folks, is the 1947 amendment to our federal labor law that really changed a lot of the intended framework. I saw somebody else put a question in the Q&A about, you know. How widely does the general public and our, you know, current policymakers understand? That one of the things our federal labor law says is that our policy of our country is to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining. well, Taft-Hartley Amendments 1947 were designed to really curtail, much of the, success that our federal labor law had begun to enable. Worker organizing had soared in the decade following the passage of the labor law, and the way it got passed was you have to really sort of look at it in historical context as a convergence of many factors, including big business backlash. Industry groups had been trying to repeal or get rid of via court challenges or undermine via state policies our federal labor laws since the moment it got passed. We should be clear, they’re still trying to do that today, and they used the opportunity of a convergence, and some really, solid alliances with white supremacist groups. groups and Southern Democrats at the time who wanted to block multiracial union organizing that was taking off in a lot of sectors. And so a wave of Republicans who were elected to Congress in 1946 had a new majority. They joined forces with some Southern Democrats to have a veto-proof majority. Taft-Hartley was not necessarily a political popular prospect even at the time among the electorate. But it was forced through Congress over a presidential veto. And it’s still embedded in our labor law today. We’re still living with the damage of it.

48:02 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thank you so much, Jen. Celine, I’m sending this next question to you from Steven Knight. Isn’t the day-to-day reality of the retaliation workers face for speaking up, let alone organizing, close to the heart of the problem?

48:17 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

Absolutely. I mean, that is sort of when we talk about the broken system of labor law, it allows for that kind of retaliation for workers when they do try and speak up and form a union. We’ve done a ton of research on that issue at EPI and how prevalent it is that employers try and coerce and retaliate against workers. And they really do that, unfortunately, under current law. without meaningful, there’s really no meaningful penalty. There’s no, you know, there are no monetary penalties at all, really, civil monetary penalties in the NLRA. So they do so with relative impunity. It’s a perverse system in that it sort of incentivizes, because it is so weak, employers to violate workers’ rights pretty routinely. And as I mentioned, we have a whole sort of report that looks at that the charges that workers unfortunately file at the National Labor Relations Board when they’re trying to form a union and employers do everything from firing workers in retaliation for union activity to coercing them. And it’s just they do that and there really is very limited, if any, recourse under existing law, unfortunately. But even in that, I will just say, like last year, we did see, as you mentioned out of the gate, Naomi, an uptick in, you know, union membership. So I just don’t want to ever kind of, as we approach the end here, end on the note that, yes, the system is broken and there’s absolutely retaliation, but there are also success stories where even in the face of that, you know, kind of retaliation, workers really do rise up. That’s part of the, you know, benefit of all acting collectively, you know, and with some solidarity, which is at the heart of the union movement. It is a lot harder for employers to, you know, resist that in a way.

50:08 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Thanks, Celine. I am gonna, this is a toss up question. a question from Tim Newman. I was wondering if the panelists see increased fissuring and subcontracting as a counter-trend that makes expanding union density more challenging, and if so, how do we counteract that? And that’s for any of our, any of our crew, Ben, Celine, or Jed, who wants to take it.

50:42 Ben Zipperer (EPI)

Maybe, Celine, you could say some extra things, but I mean, absolutely, that’s absolutely the case. That is a major impediment to… kind of, any form of solidarity at a workplace. And, that, that, that is why, you know, we’re going to, like Celine said earlier, there’s not actually a silver bullet to solve all these problems, and, you know, one additional policy that would help with that is a better joint employment, employer standard. And, That… that is definitely, a tool that employers, will use on… unless it’s, unless we prevent them from using it or sufficiently penalize them from… When they do use it.

51:33 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Yep. Celine, do you want to add anything to that?

51:38 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Okay, good, thanks. Thanks for taking the jump shot. All right, I don’t even know if I used that the right way, but anyway, we’re gonna move on. All right, so next question up, I’m gonna ask. I’m actually, I don’t think we’re gonna answer this, but Dennis Olson put a really interesting note in the question and answer, and I’m just flagging that for Jen, that Rhode Island recently passed a new bill requiring labor peace agreements and set-asides for worker-owned co-ops. Do you wanna say anything? about that.

52:15 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

I don’t know enough about that specific policy to say anything about that, but I’m glad to know more about it and excited to look at it. And yeah, I think it’s a great example of another avenue that many state and local governments are pursuing are forms of labor peace agreements. It’s becoming a… you know, I think there’s some really good model policies, particularly in the growing cannabis industry in some states. So, appreciate you raising that as yet another, good example of opportunities that states have.

52:46 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Great, thank you. All right. And then I think we are we’re going to do one more question and then we are going to wrap it up. One question came in. From, Lewis, I think it is. How do you suggest we connect union density and collective bargaining as a means to addressing the social justice concerns that are on top of mind for families? And that, again, jump shot, probably Celine or Jen, but Ben is welcome to it as well.

53:21 Jennifer Sherer (EPI-EARN)

I’ll just say right out of the gate, and then toss it to Celine, that I think we view this report as a tool that we hope people can use exactly for that purpose, because no matter what your top issue is, if it’s democracy, if it’s reversing poverty, if it’s addressing racial disparities, if it’s reproductive justice, no matter what it is, there is, it’s very hard to see that we have a collective pathway toward permanently transforming our society on any of those, issues without a stronger, organized, collective, base of, workers. And unions are the pathway to that, so I’ll just toss it to Celine for any other…

54:12 Celine McNicholas (EPI)

I’m not even gonna weigh in. Not have said it better than Jen, so that’s, yeah, right. Ditto, plus one.

54:19 Naomi Walker (EPI)

Awesome. Well, I am going to wrap us up. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you check out the report, share it with your friends, share it with your family, send it out on social media. We need all the help we can get sharing this message that tripling union membership would really have a transformative impact. on workers, their families, and our communities. And so please do help us lift this up. Thank you for sharing this hour with us. We appreciate your time and we look forward to you joining other sessions. And also if you have any other questions, please drop them in the chat really quickly. A lot of times they’re fodder. for FAQs or blog posts or reports, and so don’t hesitate. If there’s something that you want to raise, don’t hesitate to bring it up right now. So thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Take care.