Labor Isn’t a Special Interest. It Promotes the Common Good.
Decades of data shows that nonworkers, including retirees and students, make up one of labor’s most consistently pro-union constituencies. The movement has more allies than it realizes, and harnessing them could reshape its strategic horizon.
Retirees, disabled people, homemakers, and the unemployed consistently exhibit high support for unions. Labor has more friends than it realizes and their engagement strengthens its case as a general-interest force. (Mostafa Bassim / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Perhaps no one spends more time on Starbucks workers’ picket lines and helps turn away more Starbucks deliveries than Lenny Lamkin.
The seventy-three-year-old retired government worker has been a force of nature during the strike by Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) at stores across Chicago. His heartfelt pleas (and occasional reprimands) have convinced countless would-be Starbucks customers to take their business elsewhere, and he has educated many a Teamster about their contractual right and working-class duty to refuse to deliver milk and supplies to Starbucks stores.
Lenny might seem like an exception. How many retired people would rather spend their time fighting on the front lines of the class war than engaging in more relaxing activities? After all, if unions act like “special interest” groups that are narrowly focused on advancing the interests of their members, as a common narrative goes, we might expect nonworkers like Lenny to be generally less than enthusiastic about unions on average, or at least to be less supportive of unions than workers.
That was our prediction when we recently conducted what we believe is the first analysis of union sentiment among nonworkers.
But our results suggest there are probably more Lennys than you might have thought — or at least more would-be Lennys or Lenny-lites — waiting in the wings for inspiration, recruitment, and mobilization by the labor movement.
Contrary to our expectations, retirees and other nonworker groups — including the permanently disabled, homemakers, students, and the unemployed — have generally expressed more support for unions than workers, even after controlling for a range of other factors.
These statistical findings are yet another indication that unions are better understood as what we would call a “general interest group,” not a “special interest group.” They also underscore the potential for unions to collaborate with and mobilize not just nonmembers, but nonworkers — for example, by “bargaining for the common good.” As we’ll explain later, we chalk up the unexpectedly high union support of nonworkers to their material interests, “principled solidarity,” and insulation from anti-union messaging.
Labor’s Unlikely Champions
Looking at data going back to 1972, the permanently disabled (59.6 points), retired (53.9), unemployed (57.2), and students (55.4) have all registered higher average feeling thermometer readings toward unions than workers (52.7), according to an analysis of American National Election Studies data. These higher levels of support have remained relatively constant over time, though student support has increased while retiree support has moderated in recent years.
Most of these correlations are statistically significant and hold after controlling for other factors, including age, education, income, race, household union membership, and political ideology. (The only exception is the correlation between student status and higher union support, which disappears after adding control variables.) The positive predictive effects on union support of being disabled (3.5 points more support than workers) or retired (2.6 points more support than workers) are greater than or similar to the positive predictive effects of some other factors commonly linked to union support — including being low-income rather than middle-income (1.7 points), having less than a high school education versus having a high school degree (3.3 points), or identifying as a woman (2.2 points). Being a homemaker (1.7 points) or unemployed (1.0 points) are associated with more modest increases in union support. When we account for changes over time, the positive predictive effects of nonworker statuses on union support have also remained relatively consistent.
We don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill. Some other demographic characteristics are much stronger predictors of union support. For example, being liberal has a positive predictive effect of 13.7 points compared to being conservative; identifying as black has a positive effect of 11.9 points compared to identifying as white; and belonging to a union household has a positive effect of 14.8 points.
But the simple fact that nonworkers are not less supportive of unions than workers is both encouraging and strategically revealing: It challenges the “special interest” narrative and underscores the promise of a specific form of coalitional work for the labor movement.
Exactly why nonworkers have generally been more supportive of unions than workers themselves is an open question. Union opponents might jump to argue that lower worker support is evidence that unions fail to perform for their main constituency. But the much higher support for unions among those who actually have an opportunity to exercise power through them — that is, unionized workers — weakens that interpretation. And abundant evidence that unions improve wages and job security, boost benefits and wealth, and provide greater protections against discrimination kills it off. Instead, we offer three relatively intuitive reasons that nonworkers tend to support unions more than workers.
The Special Interest of the Common Good
First, it is perfectly rational for nonworkers to support unions because unions typically promote policies that advance their material interests: Social Security and Medicare for retirees, unemployment benefits for the unemployed, and disability benefits for the disabled. As a major statistical study on the policy influence of the less well-off concluded, unions “would appear to be among the most promising interest group bases for strengthening the policy influence of America’s poor and middle class.” Unions also engage on a much wider range of issues than other generally pro-poor groups, such as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) or universities, and they are much more likely than those groups to lobby on issues “on which other powerful interest groups are aligned on the other side” – namely, businesses and the rich.
Second, we posit that nonworkers register relatively high levels of support for unions out of “principled solidarity.” Originally coined to explain greater support for unions among precarious workers, principled solidarity is rooted in empathy stemming from economic fragility. Principled solidarity predisposes the most economically vulnerable groups to be especially supportive of economic underdogs in principle, regardless of whether the underdogs in any given situation are more privileged than they are. Because the retired, permanently disabled, homemakers, and the unemployed are typically more economically vulnerable and precarious than workers, we suggest that, on average, they may feel more intense principled solidarity with unions than actual workers.
Another reason why nonworkers are so supportive of unions could be because they are less exposed to anti-union messaging. Many employers include anti-union messaging in their orientation for new workers. And workers can generally count on being subject to virulent anti-union messaging if their employer catches even a whiff of organizing. These campaigns warn that unions could take away their voice, reduce their wages and benefits, and cause them to lose their jobs. While contradicted by the facts, such warnings can be perniciously effective at undermining union support. However, nonemployed groups are less likely to have internalized this messaging than workers simply because they have worked less recently or not at all.
Organized labor can do more to both leverage and fully vindicate its status as a “general interest group.”
Recognizing that all of this is much easier said than done, we highlight five strategies for unions and activists to move in that direction. The first is for unions to organically expand their base of nonworker supporters by sponsoring more clubs and social activities open to non–union members. They could also launch initiatives that cater to nonworker groups, such as the permanently disabled and unemployed — think food pantries, tenant unions, unemployed councils, and student labor organizations, as Lenny suggests.
Overlapping with the first, the second strategy is for unions to invest in existing labor–community bridge organizations like Jobs for Justice and its local affiliates, Alliance for Retired Americans and local union retiree chapters, Working America, and student labor organizations, such as Students Organizing for Labor Rights at Northwestern University.
The third is to offer organizing training to nonworkers, equipping them with the skills to recruit and organize their peers and to salt employers if they enter the workforce. The Inside Organizer School, Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, Labor Notes, and Organizing for Power have built models that unions should invest in and replicate with their own in-person trainings — all with an eye toward actively recruiting nonworkers.
The fourth is to seed or back community benefits agreement campaigns more aggressively. For instance, Lenny believes that the Northwestern Accountability Alliance — a labor–community coalition that he helped anchor — could have won more concessions from Northwestern over a stadium rebuild if it had “inspired more worker and retiree involvement.”
The fifth strategy is for more unions to embrace the concept of “bargaining for the common good,” in which unions partner with community groups to negotiate “common good” provisions into their contracts.
Expanding Solidarity
Many of these initiatives have long existed but remain neglected or underfunded. To kick them into higher gear, rank-and-file activists must take the initiative and directly undertake or contribute to collaborative projects with the non-employed themselves. Formal union backing may follow once there are early successes to point to, but institutional buy-in isn’t needed for such efforts to bear significant fruit.
In the past, nonworkers who participated in the labor movement have sometimes exhibited more creativity, militancy, and progressivism than workers themselves. The homemaker auxiliary of the United Farm Equipment Workers of America (FE), for example, pushed “beyond whatever the men wanted” in its efforts to reinforce interracial solidarity — hosting an interracial dance in 1949, as historian Toni Gilpin has documented. This offers a lesson to unions seeking to fully leverage their status as a “general interest group”: Treat the non-employed as collaborators entitled to act on their own initiative, not as foot soldiers.
A Chicago Starbucks strike support committee — which is anchored by a number of unemployed people — offers an inspiring example of a community support initiative that has flourished in part by operating autonomously. The committee secured commitments from dozens of organizations to support the strike weeks before its launch and has coordinated that support with dedicated organizational liaisons throughout the walkout. A zealous participant in this initiative, Lenny sees an important role for nonworkers in the struggle ahead.
“There are plenty of retirees passing out flyers at Starbucks stores and joining pickets [and] there have been some students, but we could use more,” he said. “Unemployed workers of all ages could apply for jobs in nonunion Starbucks [locations] and help build the union.”