Will 2023 Lock-In 2022’s Worker Organizing Successes?

2022 has been quite a year for worker organizing. The names alone tell the story: Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Apple retail stores, Ultium Cells, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, New York Times, Art Institute (and School) of Chicago, University of Washington, and many, many others. During the first three quarters of 2022, private-sector workers filed 58% more petitions for union representation elections with the National Labor Relations Board than they had during the same period in 2021. Unions won more than 70% of those elections . By any reasonable measure, that’s an impressive increase in successful worker activism.

Other employers bypassed the election route and voluntarily recognized their employees’ unions, including gold-standard brands like Major League Baseball . Now, thousands of minor leaguers will be represented by the powerful Major League Baseball Players Association.

"Organizing is a means, not the end. The goal of union organizing is a collective bargaining agreement that improves the lives of the workers who organized."

Yet, whether 2022 was a landmark year for worker power will be largely decided in 2023. Four factors will determine the path forward for the next year and beyond.

Factor #1: The unions that organized in 2022 must secure good-quality collective bargaining agreements in 2023.

Organizing is a means, not the end. The goal of union organizing is a collective bargaining agreement that improves the lives of the workers who organized. Without a contract, organizing successes do not pay off in wage increases, better health, retirement, and leave benefits, improved workplace safety and health, and stronger protections against workplace discrimination and harassment. Also, the lack of a first contract leaves unions vulnerable to decertification elections driven by their employers. Some employers whose employees organized in 2022 appear to be slow-walking negotiations until a one-year “election bar” expires, perhaps with a decertification election as their goal. Contracts could impose longer bars on decertification, while also generating successes the unions can employ in campaigns among their new members.

Factor #2 – Several negotiations involving large, high-profile unions and employers must produce meaningful progress for the unions’ members.

It’s not just the new unions that need to secure good-quality contracts; very large existing unions will enter negotiations , as well. The UAW will bargain with the Big Three auto makers in 2023. The Teamsters will negotiate with UPS. A coalition of unions will bargain with United Airlines. West Coast Ports labor negotiations have continued long past the expiration of the last contract between the Pacific Maritime Association and the ILWU. Given the controversy around the freight rail labor negotiations, which ended with Congress imposing an outcome on the railroads and unions, any bargaining --- including these negotiations --- that could lead to an economy-rattling work stoppage will raise tensions at the bargaining table and in the White House. On the other hand, if these negotiations produce meaningful improvements in the lives of these unions’ members, the contracts will become rallying cries to other workers to organize or join a union in 2023.

"Given the huge volume of jobs involved, unions can increase the national union density rate (i.e., percentage of all U.S. workers who are union members) by organizing a higher-than-average percentage of workers in these new, federally funded jobs."

Factor #3 – A sizable share of the jobs to be created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act must be union jobs.

Together, these mammoth federal spending bills will produce millions of new jobs in industries with union representation about the national average: construction, manufacturing, utilities, and transportation, for example. President Biden established “prevailing wages and the free and fair chance to join a union” as a top priority in the implementation of the infrastructure law and has made creating “good union jobs” a central focus of his administration.

Given the huge volume of jobs involved, unions can increase the national union density rate (i.e., percentage of all U.S. workers who are union members) by organizing a higher-than-average percentage of workers in these new, federally funded jobs. Hundreds of thousands of new union members, not just hundreds OR thousands, could be organized. In fact, successful organizing in these federally-funded sectors would produce a substantially larger number of new union members than all those organized in the 2022 campaigns listed above.

Factor #4 – Workers must sustain and accelerate their activism and organizing.

It seems obvious, but there is no substitute for workers continuing to organize in their workplaces and work sites across the country and economy. The union movement and worker power cannot grow without sustained, even increased, worker activism. Union membership has shrunk from roughly 35% of the American workforce in the mid-1950s --- before public-sector unions were common --- to around 10% today. ?

In January 2023, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its Union Members-2022 survey. It is unlikely to show that workers' organizing successes in 2022 moved the needle on union density in the U.S. The problem is vast; too big to be solved in one year or with one strategy. Workers securing meaningful bargaining and political power in more workplaces, more industries, and more communities requires nothing less than an all-hands-on-deck strategy.

The AFL-CIO will launch a new organizing project in 2023 fully funded by its affiliates . The Strategic Organizing Center , sponsored by a smaller group of unions, continues its work. And some workers are organizing independent unions. These are building blocks to success. But continuing, or even growing, the worker activism of 2022 is the foundation for expanded worker power in 2023 and into the future.