I’ve always been obsessed with the concept of a labor union.
Both my mother and grandfather were actively involved in unions during their careers, so as soon as I developed a concept of what work was, I was familiar with what a union was.
To a young me, the idea just made sense. Why wouldn’t people band together to represent themselves if they had problems with their work?
While my opinions are, at least theoretically, more nuanced now, I still cannot shake my appreciation for the organizations that helped my family members receive fair compensation for their work.
As such, I was quite interested to learn that Teamsters Local 320, which represents the interests of more than 1,500 University of Minnesota union workers, is negotiating with the University and plans to hold a strike vote.
While negotiations and a strike vote are powerful symbols of worker solidarity, they also indicate that workers’ discontent and struggles have hit a breaking point. After all, strikes are a risky and expensive last resort.
Teamsters lead negotiator Jackson Kerr said negotiations with the University are not going well, as proposed pay increases are inadequate and discussions of other key issues are stalled.
“The irony is we’re sitting across the table from people who work for a higher education institution that claims to stand for things like progress, improvement, education of the state’s population, things like that,” Kerr said. “They say that out of one side of their mouth, and then on the other side, they take these incredibly flippant, anti-union positions and pay their workforce poverty wages.”
Even though labor unions are powerful organizations, collective bargaining is not an easy task. Union members have plenty of obstacles to overcome before they can achieve their goals.
Kerr said the labor movement as a whole is struggling to deal with employers who are increasingly hostile to unions, including the University.
“They’ve taken a very aggressive stance and approach to unions to the point where there was a time a few years ago where they actually prided themselves on not having a majority union workforce,” Kerr said. “And I think that’s sort of emblematic of one of the big problems the labor movement is facing.”
Fortunately for the Teamsters, Minnesota has a solid reputation for being friendly to the labor movement, providing them with increased protections and bargaining power.
University history professor William Jones said while laws on work and unions vary state by state, Minnesota has a history of powerful unions and pro-labor policy. This led to one of the state’s two major political parties being named the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party.
Jones said the state government in the past few years has strengthened and expanded the coverage of labor laws. However, these state protections do not mean the law makes life easy for workers.
Jones said even though laws such as the Wagner Act enshrined some key union protections into federal law, many workers are still vulnerable.
“There have been legal and policy changes that have led to a situation where it’s actually very difficult for a worker who does not belong to a union to form a union and win a contract,” Jones said. “Those changes have occurred over a long period of time.”
Labor unions are also struggling with dwindling membership, as the percentage of unionized workers in the United States has been declining for decades.
University political science lecturer Tim Collins said unions used to wield a large amount of political and social power, but business owners and corporations have done everything in their power to undermine this influence.
“If there’s a lot of money to be made and people can make more without a union, especially people at the top, they don’t want unions,” Collins said.
With plummeting membership, inconsistent state laws and policies limiting union creation, the deck is stacked against the labor movement. However, there is still hope for a resurgence.
Jones said that despite a fall in the popular opinion of unions around 2010, union support recently skyrocketed, especially among younger generations who experienced the difficulties of starting their careers during the pandemic.
“A lot of the new union efforts have been in places like Starbucks, where the staff generally tends to be younger,” Jones said. “There was a dramatic upsurge in union activity during the pandemic.”
This shift is evident in public opinion polls, with a 2024 study finding that while older groups had more divided opinions about falling union membership, only 30% of people ages 18 to 39 believed the decline of unions was a good thing.
“There’s certainly a younger generation of union stewards who are sort of taking a more active role in their union at the University,” Kerr said. “A lot of the union stewards who have stepped up into leadership positions, I won’t generalize and say that they’re entirely young people, but many of them I’d say are younger than the age of 35.”
For generations that are reevaluating their roles in the workplace, unions provide a crucial opportunity to gain back a level of autonomy in their lives and careers.
The benefits of unionized labor extend beyond just union members, as studies have shown wages are higher for all workers in areas with active labor unions, according to Collins.
“I hope this moment is the time for people to realize how vital unions are, and it seems like it’s working in terms of public opinion,” Collins said. “Even not being in a union, you are helped by unionized labor around you.”
While being an active union member may take a lot of time, effort and resources, the investment is more than worth it for the improved wages, benefits and workplace safety. These critical quality-of-life benefits are often hard to obtain without the bargaining power unions provide.
As young people become more aware of our positions in the job market, we should look to the example of the Teamsters to remind ourselves that we have real power when we work together.
Negotiations may be far from over, but unions continue to give a microphone to workers to share their struggles publicly and fight to fix them. Not to plagiarize “High School Musical,” but we all are truly in this together.
