The worst-kept secret in US polling just received further confirmation: organised labour is extremely popular among Americans, garnering levels of support matched by few if any other institutions today. The latest data point shows that Americans favour unions over big business by margins not seen since the Sixties, according to American National Election Studies (ANES).

This result belies corporate America’s favourite talking point: that Americans simply don’t like or want unions. Too bad that, with precious few exceptions, elected Republicans remain hostile to organised labour’s cause — thereby fumbling a massive political opportunity.

The ANES has surveyed public attitudes toward unions and firms for six decades. For much of that time, the popularity of the two moved roughly in tandem. But the trend lines diverged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — and they haven’t stopped moving apart. Today, organised labour registers 60% approval (and climbing), while business is fast sliding toward 40%.

Other polls underscore the same reality. Earlier this month, polling from American Compass, the pro-labour conservative group, found unions enjoying stratospheric popularity, including 38-point net favourability among Republicans born after 1980. Even older Republicans, the quintessential Reaganite Boomers, have a net favourable view of organised labour, albeit by a smaller margin than their children and grandchildren.

Gallup, meanwhile, has been tracking public approval of organised labour since 1936. Last August — right about the time Donald Trump back-slapped Elon Musk for firing employees who dared to band together — unions’ approval rating hit 70%, with only 23% of the country disapproving. The last time unions were held in such wide esteem was 1967 — just before the labour movement entered a prolonged period of decline.

Private economy union density — the share of employed workers who belong to a union — stands at a dismal 6%, down from a postwar peak of a third. If you ask corporate America’s spokesmen, including neoliberal Democrats, that’s simply because voters don’t find unions attractive anymore, or feel that they aren’t relevant in a post-industrial economy.

This is nonsense. Studies comparing Americans’ employment realities versus their preferences reveal an enormous gap in representation. Far from declining, interest in union representation has steadily grown among non-union workers since the Seventies, with one study finding that nearly half of the non-union labour force in 2017 would have voted to join a union if given the choice. That translates into some 60 million workers who are currently underrepresented by unions.

As Damon Silvers of American Federation of Labor likes to say, the basic agenda of the labour movement — higher wages and better benefits, collective bargaining, protected entitlements, retirement safety — is the single most popular political programme in the US. It’s what has impelled some Republicans to reach out to organised labour in recent years.

The standout figure here is Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who has forged a close working relationship with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien and backed numerous pieces of pro-worker legislation. The most notable of his efforts is a law reform that would reverse the decades-long anti-union drift of the US labour regime, from a mechanism meant to encourage collective bargaining into a tool for union-busting. American Compass polling has found solid public support for the Hawley proposals, not least among Republican voters.

But even under Trump and JD Vance, the GOP as a whole too often pays lip service to the “multiracial working class” while promoting the same old anti-union measures or ghoulish austerity that very few Americans outside Wall Street or libertarian think tanks want. Unless more Republicans reckon with polling reality, the Democrats are sure to find an opening back to the low-income and working-class constituencies they lost in 2016 and 2024. Anti-union Republicans will have only themselves to blame.

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Sohrab Ahmari is the US editor of UnHerd and the author, most recently, of Tyranny, Inc: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty — and What To Do About It

SohrabAhmari

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