Labor is having an interesting moment right now. Joe Biden was the first sitting U.S. president to join a picket line. Since Donald Trump took office, he has tried to slash collective bargaining rights. Unionization rates—the total number of workers in unions—are low, but approval ratings for unions are high.
KAZU’s Elena Neale-Sacks sat down with UC Santa Cruz professor Steve McKay, director of the Center for Labor and Community, to make sense of this moment and what it means for the Monterey Bay area.
The following conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Elena Neale-Sacks: How would you describe the trajectory of labor power in recent years, both at a national level and at a local level?
Steve McKay: In some ways, there's been a real resurgence. One, just in terms of what the general public thinks about unions. It's actually the highest level—at 70% of people approve of unions—the highest since 1965. So in general, people approve [of] unions. But then we also know that the level of actual unionization is at an all-time low, or not all-time low, but almost. We're at under 9% or so of workers are covered by a union contract. And if we split that from public to private, the private sector is around 6% organized, whereas the public sector is about 30%, 35% in California. But Santa Cruz really has been, for a lot of people, a leading edge of the union movement.
Two large UC systemwide unions are currently negotiating contracts. Both have a strong presence at UC Santa Cruz and have recently gone on strike.
SM: So Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, San Benito County, have a very active labor movement that's reflective of California, but also leads in a number of areas.
ENS: From your perspective, how far has the second Trump administration gone in trying to dismantle labor rights? And what do you see as the trajectory over the course of his term?
SM: I think everyone's trying to dissect some of this stuff, and you have to be careful in both taking it very seriously and understanding what the limits of it actually are—what are just demonstrations of power and spectacle and what are really fundamental changes. And so what we're seeing is some of that dismantling of the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board), so some of the structures that unions depend on. So that's one of the biggest areas that we're seeing it. The other is going after federal workers. So, you know, 30% of federal workers are union members, so going after shrinking the federal workforce in large part is an assault on unions and again we see here blatant disregard for the law in firing all these federal workers. And then third, I think it's the assault on immigration. So I think it's really important, with 31 million workers who are immigrants, about 19% of the total workforce are immigrants. And so an attack on immigrants is really an attack on workers. And then that's even more so in California, and then even more so in Monterey and Santa Cruz County, where we have a very high, of course, in [agriculture], well over 50% of the workers undocumented.
ENS: On a fundamental level, why are unions important and why is labor power important?
SM: Well, I guess we see, particularly now, that we live in a much more precarious economy and, now, society. And unions are one of the very few organizations or organized structures that can help defend against that level of precarity. Union workers make more, they have better benefits, and they have better job security. Across the board, compared to non-union workers, union workers are more protected. So when we think in this moment when we're in mostly a defensive posture and trying to battle precariousness all around, unions are one of the only independent structures that actually fight that kind of precariousness and help empower workers.
April 17 will be a national day of action for higher education. And I think we're going to see unions, students, and others who are really worried about this now coming together. And I think in that sense, labor has a real responsibility, but also a real opportunity to lead in this moment.
