Creative Commons
Gig economy workers
Destiny Violet Richards, a twenty-two-year-old security guard in Chicago, has managed to do what many young people cannot: advance toward the American dream, thanks to her membership in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1, which represents 50,000 workers in six Midwestern states.
“I don’t walk on eggshells anymore because I have the union behind me,” says Richards, who became a member last year. The wages negotiated by the union enable her to keep up with inflation. She has health care benefits that her friends in the gig economy can’t afford. “But best of all,” she says, “is the security of knowing that I have somebody I can talk to about the rules and how I should be treated in the workplace.”
Richards is a loyal employee who, during the pandemic, worked twelve- to sixteen-hour shifts that left her exhausted. “I paid a significant price,” she says. “I dropped out of college because I didn’t have the energy or concentration for my studies in information technology.”
“Corporate decisions to downsize and close factories have also highlighted power imbalances in the workplace and the need for workers to be represented.” —Marquita Walker
But meeting other union members who were facing the same challenges “decreased my sense of vulnerability,” Richards says. “It also gave me a sense of being part of a movement to bring about positive changes in the workplace that will benefit all security guards.”
The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank, found that only 15.8 million Americans were represented by unions in 2021, a decline of 581,000 from 2019.
Historically, younger workers have been less likely to join unions than older workers, says Marquita Walker, interim chair and associate professor of labor studies at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.
“But that is beginning to change in the twenty-first century because of the growth of the gig economy, which has ushered in temporary positions, unstable pay, and a lack of benefits,” Walker says in a phone interview. “Corporate decisions to downsize and close factories have also highlighted power imbalances in the workplace and the need for workers to be represented in negotiations that affect them and their families.”
Walker, author of The Daily Grind: How Workers Navigate the Employment Relationship, says the 2008 recession forced many young workers to rethink their assumptions about their place in the economy. Unemployment skyrocketed, depriving young people of income to pay their school loans, buy homes, and acquire savings as their parents had done early in their careers.
Then the pandemic further exacerbated the economic fears of young people, and for good reason. A December 2021 Gallup poll found that workers under forty were more likely to have lost jobs and to have worked fewer hours than older workers. Millennials and Generation Z (those born after 1996) also reported more stress and negativism in the workplace.
As a result of the economic downturn, support for labor unions among U.S. adults increased to 68 percent in 2021, the highest point since 1965. Moreover, the Gallup poll found that younger workers were the most enthusiastic: 77 percent of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds approved of unions.
Interest in joining unions is also at the highest level in four decades. A 2018 poll conducted for the Institute for Work and Employment Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 48 percent of nonunion workers said they would join a union if given the opportunity to do so. More than half of the nearly 4,000 respondents cited a “voice gap” on key issues such as benefits, compensation, promotions, and job security. Others cited the lack of protection against harassment and discrimination.
Yet, of course, unions face fierce opposition from employers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, private-sector employers spend nearly $340 million a year hiring “union avoidance advisers.” Twenty-seven states now have “right to work” laws that guarantee that no employee can be required to join a union or pay union dues.
SEIU Local 1, founded in 1904 by residential maintenance workers in Chicago, has met this challenge by organizing around issues like low-paying jobs in the service economy, which most acutely affect young immigrants and Black and brown workers. In January of this year, thanks to the work of Local 1, about 6,500 contract workers at O’Hare and Midway airports saw their wages rise to $17, which is $2 higher than Chicago’s minimum wage. The caterers, aircraft de-icers, baggage handlers, and wheelchair attendants will earn $18 an hour in 2023.
Local 1 has also rallied in support of activist causes beyond the workplace. In addition to urging the Michigan Board of State Canvassers to certify the 2020 election results, it has denounced decisions of juries in racial justice cases and pledged to “tear down the walls of racism inherent in [U.S.] society.”
Young people with college degrees employed in rapidly growing sectors of the U.S. economy like technology are also turning to unions. Since 2020, the Communications Workers of America has recruited workers at major multinational tech companies like Google, as well as tiny startups and small independent studios in the video game industry.
Myriame Lachapelle, a thirty-one-year-old producer at Vodeo Games, where workers won formal recognition from management in December 2021, says that being in a union has “made a tremendous difference in helping me cope with the time-crunch culture that pervades the video game industry.” The unit represents an entirely remote workforce spread across the United States and Canada, including independent contractors who make up more than half of the bargaining unit.
“I’m passionate about my work and am willing to give up other activities to work round the clock to meet the deadlines for a new product,” Lachapelle says in a phone interview. “But after six years in the industry, I recognized in 2018 that I needed to improve my work-life balance.”
Now she’s proud to call herself a union member: “Although it took years to form our union, it was worth it. I have never felt closer to my fellow workers in different locations or as confident that we will be able to help our employer thrive.”