Young Workers Can Provide the Organizing Energy That Unions Desperately Need
Gen Z and Millennial workers overwhelmingly support unions, and they’re at the forefront of the current organizing upsurge. Labor can take advantage of this opening — if union leaders get off the sidelines and devote massive resources to new organizing.
Starbucks workers stand in solidarity with striking SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America members on the picket line outside Netflix studios on July 28, 2023, in Los Angeles. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)
Why are most national unions doing relatively little to meet the current opening for new organizing? One overlooked reason is the deepening generation gap within organized labor.
Consider this: the current AFL-CIO Executive Board’s average age is sixty-one. In contrast, the average age of worker-organizers involved in recent worker-led union drives is twenty-seven (and the median age is twenty-four), according to the initial results of a large-scale survey I’m conducting.
Because labor’s top summits are so disconnected from younger workers, it’s not that surprising that most national unions continue to underestimate their as-yet-untapped potential for revitalizing the labor movement. While it’s heartening that Gallup finds that 77 percent of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds support unions — the highest rate of any age group — unless unions start putting far more resources towards new organizing, it will be hard to turn this enthusiasm into action at scale.
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