“For only the second time in a quarter century, a majority of Republicans — 52% — approve of labor unions, according to a new Gallup poll.
Why it matters: Despite Americans’ rising approval, union membership remains near a modern low. Congress has repeatedly blocked labor’s biggest priorities, and House Republicans are now investigating unions, even as their own voters approve of them.
Republicans’ warmer feelings toward unions don’t translate into wanting them to wield more power: 49% of Republicans want unions to have less influence, compared with just 19% who want them to have more.
…By the numbers: Overall, 71% of Americans approved of unions, tying the 2022 level. Gallup last recorded higher approval in 1959 at 73%.
Approval stands at 89% among Democrats, 70% among independents and 52% among Republicans. The only other time since 2001 that Gallup found majority Republican approval was in 2022.
A record 47% of Americans want unions to have more influence, more than double the 23% who want less influence. Another 26% want their influence to remain the same.
The big picture: The latest numbers mark a reversal from the Great Recession. In 2009, union approval bottomed out at 48%, and 42% of Americans wanted unions to have less influence while just 25% wanted them to have more.
Reality check: Americans are embracing unions at a time when few workers belong to one. Just 11% of U.S. workers — 16.5 million — were represented by unions in 2025, compared with 23% and 20.5 million workers in 1983, the first year of comparable data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The most recent year included union representation for less than 7% of private-sector workers.
State of play: Workers have been trying to make up for lost time. Union election petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board more than doubled from 2021 to 3,286 in 2024. The agency received 2,633 election petitions last year, down from the prior year’s peak but still well above earlier years.
Americans are skeptical that today’s goodwill will translate into greater strength. Just 27% expect unions to become stronger, while 39% expect them to weaken and 29% expect little change, according to the Gallup polling.
…Zoom in: Organized labor has repeatedly failed to turn Democratic control of Washington into its biggest legislative prize: rewriting federal law to make it easier for workers to join unions and to win contracts.
The Employee Free Choice Act, a signature priority at the start of the Obama administration, would have made it easier for workers to unionize when a majority of workers signed cards. Despite overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, it never became law.In 2021, the House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, the next sweeping attempt to rewrite federal labor law, with five Republicans joining Democrats.
But it stalled in the Senate where Republicans and even Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly, Mark Warner and Kyrsten Sinema withheld their support.
Between the lines: President Biden leaned on executive action and appointments, creating a task force to promote organizing and pushing the NLRB to favor unionizing workers. In 2023, he became the first president to join striking workers on a picket line, standing with autoworkers in Michigan.
The environment has swung sharply. President Trump has used executive orders to remove collective bargaining rights for broad swaths of the federal workforce and to fire the labor board’s pro-union general counsel and a Democratic board member.
The latest: House Republicans have also intensified scrutiny of union leadership, launching investigations into the United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers, the American Federation of Teachers and three railroad unions, demanding records about political activity.
The bottom line: Labor has won back popularity it lost during decades of decline, but its harder fight is turning that goodwill into bargaining power and growing its membership.
The fine print: Gallup surveyed 1,200 U.S. adults by cellphone and landline Aug. 3–24. The overall margin of error is 4 percentage points.
2 comments on “On Labor Day 2026: Americans want more powerful unions”
Karen Keiser on
Does this encouraging polling prompt anyone to think about what to do given this positive climate for unions. Has anyone considered trying to repeal some state Right to Work laws? For example: Initiative campaigns in targeted states? Nevada? Missouri? Just asking if anyone is thinking ahead?
Don’t look now, but it’s already time for the DNC and the states to figure out the 2028 Democratic presidential primary calendar, so I wrote an overview at New York:
The first 2028 presidential primaries are just two years away. And for the first time since 2016, both parties are expected to have serious competition for their nominations. While Vice-President J.D. Vance is likely to enter the cycle as a formidable front-runner for the GOP nod, recent history suggests there will be lots of other candidates. After all, Donald Trump drew 12 challengers in 2024. On the Democratic side, there is no one like Vance (or Hillary Clinton going into 2016 or Joe Biden going into 2020) who is likely to become the solid front-runner from the get-go, though Californians Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris lead all of the way too early polls.
But 2028 horse-race speculation really starts with the track itself, as the calendar for state contests still isn’t set. What some observers call the presidential-nominating “system” isn’t something the national parties control. In the case of primaries utilizing state-financed election machinery, state laws govern the timing and procedures. Caucuses (still abundant on the Republican side and rarer among Democrats) are usually run by state parties. National parties can vitally influence the calendar via carrots (bonus delegates at the national convention) or sticks (loss of delegates) and try to create “windows” for different kinds of states to hold their nominating contests to space things out and make the initial contests competitive and representative. But it’s sometimes hit or miss.
Until quite recently, the two parties tended to move in sync on such calendar and map decisions. But Democrats have exhibited a lot more interest in ensuring that the “early states” — the ones that kick off the nominating process and often determine the outcome — are representative of the party and the country as a whole and give candidates something like a level playing field. Prior to 2008, both parties agreed to do away with the traditional duopoly, in which the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary came first, by allowing early contests representing other regions (Nevada and South Carolina). And both parties tolerated the consolidation of other states seeking influence into a somewhat later “Super Tuesday” cluster of contests. But in 2024 Democrats tossed Iowa out of the early-state window altogether and placed South Carolina first (widely interpreted as Joe Biden’s thank-you to the Palmetto State for its crucial role in saving his campaign in 2020 after poor performances in other early states), with Nevada and New Hampshire voting the same day soon thereafter. Republicans stuck with the same old calendar with Trump more or less nailing down the nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire.
For 2028, Republicans will likely stand pat while Democrats reshuffle the deck (the 2024 calendar was explicitly a one-time-only proposition). The Democratic National Committee has set a January 16 deadline for states to apply for early-state status. And as the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher explains, there is uncertainty about the identity of the early states and particularly their order:
“The debate has only just begun. But early whisper campaigns about the weaknesses of the various options already offer a revealing window into some of the party’s racial, regional and rural-urban divides, according to interviews with more than a dozen state party chairs, D.N.C. members and others involved in the selection process.
“Nevada is too far to travel. New Hampshire is too entitled and too white. South Carolina is too Republican. Iowa is also too white — and its time has passed.
“Why not a top battleground? Michigan entered the early window in 2024, but critics see it as too likely to bring attention to the party’s fractures over Israel. North Carolina or Georgia would need Republicans to change their election laws.”
Nevada and New Hampshire have been most aggressive about demanding a spot at the beginning of the calendar, and both will likely remain in the early-state window, representing their regions. The DNC could push South Carolina aside in favor of regional rivals Georgia or North Carolina. Michigan is close to a lock for an early midwestern primary, but its size, cost, and sizable Muslim population (which will press candidates on their attitude towards Israel’s recent conduct) would probably make it a dubious choice to go first. Recently excluded Iowa (already suspect because it’s very white and trending Republican, then bounced decisively after its caucus reporting system melted down in 2020) could stage a “beauty contest” that will attract candidates and media even if it doesn’t award delegates.
Even as the early-state drama unwinds, the rest of the Democratic nomination calendar is morphing as well. As many as 14 states are currently scheduled to hold contests on Super Tuesday, March 7. And a 15th state, New York, may soon join the parade. Before it’s all nailed down (likely just after the 2026 midterms), decisions on the calendar will begin to influence candidate strategies and vice versa. Some western candidates (e.g., Gavin Newsom or Ruben Gallego) could be heavily invested in Nevada, while Black proto-candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Wes Moore might pursue a southern primary. Progressive favorites like AOC or Ro Khanna may have their own favorite launching pads, while self-identified centrists like Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg might have others. Having a home state in the early going is at best a mixed blessing: Losing your home-state primary is a candidate-killer, and winning it doesn’t prove a lot. And it’s also worth remembering that self-financed candidates like J.B. Pritzker may need less of a runway to stage a nationally viable campaign.
So sketching out the tracks for all those 2028 horses, particularly among Democrats, is a bit of a game of three-dimensional chess. We won’t know how well they’ll run here or there until it’s all over.
Does this encouraging polling prompt anyone to think about what to do given this positive climate for unions. Has anyone considered trying to repeal some state Right to Work laws? For example: Initiative campaigns in targeted states? Nevada? Missouri? Just asking if anyone is thinking ahead?
Hopefully the Dems respond the next time they’re in power.