PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The American worker is having a moment.
“For the first time in a long time, the bargaining power for labor seems to be increasing, which is something we haven’t seen probably since the 1970s,” said Scott Deacle, chair of the Department of Business and Economics at Ursinus College.
Labor unions had been on the decline in the 21st century, but Deacle said a confluence of events — including the pandemic and its related worker shortages, the baby boomer retirement wave, and American political opposition to free trade — have caused American labor’s seat at the bargaining table to become the strongest in recent memory.
“The baby boomer generation, as we all probably know, is in the process of retiring and has been for the last 10 or 15 years or so,” he said. “With that retirement, there has not been an equal replacement of those workers in the workforce, so that in itself is reducing the supply of labor in the United States. And that’s going to give workers some bargaining power.”
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The free trade trend gained traction with the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
“As he moved into office, he began renegotiating trade agreements, taking us out of trade agreements, imposing tariffs. … All of those things tend to do things that make the production in America more attractive, and that’s going to increase the demand for American workers. And again, give them more power at the bargaining table.”
In the short term, Deacle sees these trends as a plus for American workers. They have more cash at their disposal thanks to pandemic relief programs, and an overseas supply chain crisis is increasing demand from U.S. markets — both giving workers more leverage when negotiating pay or working conditions.
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But in the long term, right-to-work states — meaning workers are not obligated to join unions based on their employment — ultimately reduce bargaining powers and favor employers. There’s also the trend of robots in lieu of labor.
“In this pandemic that’s provided so many benefits to workers, I think one negative for workers that’s going to come out of this is that it accelerated the trend toward automation,” Deacle explained. “Employers, for safety reasons, started to automate more so there could be less human contact during the pandemic, but now also to deal with their labor shortages.”
Deacle breaks down more of the current labor movement on this episode of KYW Newsradio In Depth, as well as the role Amazon’s workers will play in the future of organized labor, Listen below.