The Best Solution to Fixing Your Crappy Job Is a Union
It’s no mystery why millions of workers are quitting their jobs: pay is low, conditions are terrible, and on-the-job disrespect is rampant. But the best way to transform a terrible job isn’t to leave it — it’s to organize a union.
Female employees of Woolworth’s department store holding a sign indicating they are striking for a 40-hour workweek in New York, 1937. (Underwood Archives / Getty Images)
Millions of workers are quitting their jobs each month. Millions more have simply declined to return to pre-pandemic jobs as businesses reopened. Thousands more have walked off the job in a wave of strikes in the past few years. All the while, economists are scratching their heads, and politicians are doing little to assuage workers’ concerns.
Those afraid of workers asserting their power — corporate interests, conservative politicians, conservative media — predictably blame working people for this predicament. They say workers are lazy, would rather collect unemployment and COVID benefits, and are more interested in drugs and video games than work.
But if you stop to listen, waves of workers across the country are clearly telling us they’re fed up. And who can blame them?
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