According to a new working paper from Danny Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, union members are now statistically happier than non-union workers. This reverses a decades-long trend of union workers reporting less job satisfaction than other employees. This trend was usually justified through a variety of hypotheses, such as union members being more involved in workplace adversity or more up-to-date on negative workplace conditions, union membership increasing job retention of dissatisfied employees, or union members feeling more comfortable criticizing their jobs. Blanchflower and Bryson report that the increase in union job satisfaction coincides with an increase in union membership over the last couple of years.
Employees of Delta Air Lines increased their vaccination rate five-fold after the company imposed a $200 monthly fine on unvaccinated employees. The monthly fine is administered through employees’ health care plan and activates for employees who are not vaccinated by November 1, 2021. The fine is an escalated attempt from Delta to convince the remaining 25% of their employees who have not gotten the vaccine to get vaccinated after exhausting other incentives.
Yahoo! Finance has covered the workers striking at Nabisco as a case study on union effectiveness during the pandemic. Nabisco workers, on strike since August 10, are opposing increased work hours and alternative work schedules to increase production on high-demand production line items. Michelle Cheng of Yahoo! Finance focuses on how pandemic employment shortages have increased bargaining power and pressure since the Nabisco employees have more favorable alternative job opportunities than before.
