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In this issue
Bonus: Are strikes popular?
No new forecast or results since Sunday's email was scores. So here's a bonus post, looking at how strikes affect public opinion toward unions. New forecast question coming on Sunday.
Are strikes popular?
Unions are more popular than they’ve been since the 1960s. But what about strikes? Do they help cement support for organized labor, or do they risk a backlash?
Strikes are intentionally disruptive, and Americans aren’t used to them the way they once were. As labor activist Richard Yeselson once wrote of the height of union power in the US, “millions supported these strikes, millions despised them—but nobody could ignore them.” Today, strikes are starting to once again become hard to ignore.
In August, prior to the United Autoworkers (UAW) strike, 75% of Americans said they sided with the auto workers, according to a Gallup poll. 72% sided with the film and TV writers, and 67% with the actors. “A record-high 61% also say unions help rather than hurt the US economy,” says Gallup. Support for unions has risen across political parties, though there’s still a big gap: 88% of Democrats approve of labor unions compared to 47% of Republicans.
But what about those more directly affected by the strikes? As the New York Times noted this week, manufacturing workers throughout the automotive supply chain would be affected by a prolonged strike.
In a 2019 paper, researchers tried to measure how strikes affected support for labor among those outside the union but directly impacted by it. They surveyed 4,000 Americans in six states about their experience with a wave of teacher strikes in 2018 and compared parents of school-age kids at the time to those with kids just out of school or just about to start. The idea is that the two groups are broadly similar, except for whether they happened to have kids in school during the teachers strikes. Any difference between them in how their opinions changed therefore plausibly captures the effect of direct exposure to the strikes.
The researchers found that those with direct experience of the strike—parents with kids in school at the time—became comparatively more supportive of the teachers.
“Not only did the teacher strikes appear to succeed in establishing a greater sense of common fate between parents and the teachers, but the strikes also increased individuals’ own interest in labor action,” the researchers conclude. “The results are especially pronounced among conservatives, Republicans, and those without personal experience with unions.”
Your mileage may vary on a study like this, of course. But what could it suggest about today’s strikes?
If the thrust of this study applies in an admittedly very different context, it suggests that affected workers in the auto supply chain could become more sympathetic to the UAW—and might even decide to organize themselves.
Nonrival will be back Sunday with a new forecast question.