Support for Labor Unions Is at a 25-Year High

Nearly half of Americans want unions to be more powerful, in a showing of labor support that's at an all-time high in the last 25 years, according to a new poll by Gallup. The poll said 47% wanted unions to have more influence, while 26% wanted unions' power to stay the same, and 23% said unions' sway should be less. 'The share wanting greater union influence is up four percentage points from 2023 after rising almost continuously from a record-low 25% in 2009,' Gallup said. 'Over the same period, the percentage wanting unions to have less influence has fallen from 42% to a record-low 23%.' During the 1950s, union approval reached as high as 73-75%. Breaking the latest poll by political party, about 73% of Democrats supported union influence compared to 45% of Independents and 19% of Republicans. 'Although independents and Republicans trail Democrats by wide margins, independents' support remains at its trend high, and Republicans' is also relatively elevated for their group,' Gallup said. In 2012, only 9% of Republicans wanted unions to have more influence. 'Even as Democrats have grown more likely to want unions to gain influence, they have become less confident that unions will do so,' Gallup said. 'Currently, 31% of Democrats expect unions to gain strength, down 16 points from 2023. Independents' expectation that unions will gain strength has declined by eight points to 28%, while Republicans' is essentially unchanged at 21%.' In Florida, for example, unions took a blow in May after the Legislature passed a law making it harder to certify and re-certify public unions. The survey was released just before Monday, when much of the country's workforce is taking a day off in a national holiday that's been celebrated since 1894. The findings were from Gallup's annual Work and Education telephone poll conducted Aug. 3-24 with 1,200 adults. 'For results based on this sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level,' Gallup said. –Gabrille Russon, Florida Politics