Current polling data shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans approve of unions, and nearly half of nonunion workers would vote to join one if given the opportunity. But if unions are so popular, why don’t workers vote for them?
The problem is that union elections today are nothing like the elections we learned about in civics class. We would rightly question the outcome of an election anywhere else if monitors reported that one side was surveilling and interrogating voters, forcing them to attend propaganda meetings denouncing its opponents, restricting the opposition’s ability to campaign, and threatening voters’ livelihood. But all of this is the normal, largely legal course of events for union elections in the United States, where competing parties do not get equal time to make their cases and voters do not have freedom of expression without retaliation.