Skip to content
topics.

Labor Day 2026: unions more popular but worker power remains weak

cultureSep 8, 2026565,530

Gallup found 71 percent of Americans approve of unions, the highest rating since 1957, with 89 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of independents, and 52 percent of Republicans expressing approval. Forty-seven percent said they want unions to have more influence, a record high for this century, while only 23 percent wanted unions to have less influence. Despite rising public support, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wages and benefits now make up 52.8 percent of the nation’s economic output, the lowest share since the BLS began measuring in 1947; a May government study put wages and benefits at 51 percent of national income, also a post-1947 low. That decline in labor’s share has coincided with a rise in profit share to 12.1 percent, the highest since 1950, and a six-year divergence in which inflation-adjusted wages rose just 3 percent since late 2019 while profits rose 50 percent. Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein noted that mid-20th-century unions like the UAW forced managers to double real wages for industrial workers, a level of bargaining power not seen since. The Prospect traces the current weakness in worker power to decades of eroded legal protections for organizing driven by employers, judges, and Republicans, combined with financialization, offshoring, and legislation that concentrated wealth, leaving private-sector union density down from more than a third in the early 1950s to about 6 percent today. The net result is widespread pro-union sentiment without the institutional union power needed to reverse decades-long declines in workers’ share of income and leverage rising corporate profits.

Robert Reich
@rbreich.bsky.social

Corporate America’s playbook: 1) Exploit workers to maximize profits 2) Use profits to buy Congress 3) Use Congress to pass union-busting laws 4) Use these laws to further exploit workers 5) Repeat Let's break the cycle and keep building back a powerful labor movement.

356432d ago
AgentJoeMcJoe 🇺🇸11

Lets not ignore the fact that Jeff Bezos makes about $200,000,000 per day. How much do you make per day?

Louie AG.9

Reagan(the antichrist of the working man) did a number on unions. Where I worked, people still voted R🤔.

—͟͞͞★ 𝚖ⲟ𝓼ﺂ ★✨🇺🇸 👣8

I’m dumbfounded that millions of people are brainwashed into thinking corporate America has their back. The staggering pay gap between minimum-wage workers and CEOs says it all. Rebuild the labor movement!

Ernie Johnston7

It is past time to rewrite the laws that govern how capitalism works. If #Billionaires want access to our market, they need to share profits with employees & their community. Also, limit #CEO packages to 20:1 average employee pay & make #StockBuybacks (that inflate C-suite pay) illegal again.

Ella G 💙7

Here we are in America which is a giant Monopoly game: the billionaires are competing to see who can acquire all the money, hotels, houses, and property, effectively bankrupting all others. They won't stop competing and raping us all until one person is left with all of the wealth.

Claude McDonald6

You forgot, use tax cuts to buy back your stock to boost your income and the wealth of your shareholders.

Quoting this
thecapt911.bsky.social3

Vote for the Democrats and you can improve your Life not the lives of the Monied Exploiters.

M𝓊𝓈𝒽o𝓉o𝓀𝓊2

"La stratégie des grandes entreprises US : 1) Exploiter les travailleurs pour maximiser les profits 2) Utiliser ces profits pour acheter le Congrès 3) Utiliser le Congrès pour faire adopter des lois antisyndicales 4) Utiliser ces lois pour exploiter davantage les travailleurs 5) Recommencer"

Progressive Rescue Dog Lover.2

Absolutely correct! What I will never understand is why would working people vote Republican when they know Republicans vote to oppose Unions?

Betty C. Jung2

This administration don’t care about anyone but fleecing the country. Turn out vote out the corrupt GOP. Let Justice prevail.

𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝
@sundaedivine.lol

Ivanka’s Labor Day: celebrating work by making sure everyone sees she escaped it.

135332d ago
Just_Vicki 🐾🎵💟🕉💙🌈🌻🇺🇲🇺🇦🇨🇦299

I can not f*cking stand this entire family.

Mary 🫘126

She’s never labored over anything. That worthless bitch is as useless a human being as her worthless pedophile father.

Nobody Important 🌻🕊️🌊100

I don't believe for a minute she is actually riding that horse at that speed and is riding that smoothly. I have never heard of or seen her riding, only that her daughter does.

Akallabêth 🇺🇦72

She’s completely clueless that her reputation is shot.

scarletfeatherhead.bsky.social61

She locked down comments on that. Even the quote-retweets were hard to find. So is this what she and her grifting spouse were going to do with that Albanian island? Odd that she'd materialize on a horse, as her Pa is rounding them up in the wild, and sending them to slaughter.

johntfs.bsky.social41

She'll never escape this, though... www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7o4...

Quoting this
Todd Lambert9

They still have pony rides on Epstein Island.

Legal Weed 4 SC 🌱7

While I wish no harm to the horse, can he just stopped suddenly and dump her on her ass?

The McNinny7

It's good she can find a horse to ride, as opposed to all the wild horses her daddy had slaughtered...

Lady with an opinion6

What a dumb (with a b) twat

Daily Trix6

Fuck both of these bishes.

DemocracyWarrior713

Maybe the horse will trip and Ivanka will go flying!

Ned Resnikoff
@resnikoff.bsky.social

More Democratic mayors and governors should be doing stuff like this. Actively working to build up private sector union density is good policy AND enlarges the political coalition that will lead to more electoral and legislative success in the future. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/07/n...

7031d ago
Sridhar Ramesh
@radishharmers.bsky.social

Union power waxed and waned. We went from the Gilded Age to the Guilded Age back to the Gilded Age.

6631d ago
Matt Pearce
@mattdpearce.com

Some Labor Day thoughts on media labor in newsrooms and Hollywood and what to do about it. mattdpearce.substack.com/p/how-should...

From the vantage point of this Labor Day in 2026, the future of media employment looks like more and more its present, a barbell made up of two groups of workers separated by a vast chasm: (1) A dwindling labor aristocracy of unionized staff workers herded into a consolidating cluster of superstar firms, like the New York Times and a post-merger Paramount-Warner Brothers; and (2) a growing mass of skilled, burning-out and unorganized media producers engaged in freelance, independent or volunteer work, largely distributed through the same technology platforms whose extractive business models put them out of work in the first place.
4132d ago
Lee West
@whodat35.bsky.social

Labor Day 2026: 35M Latino Workers Power the U.S. Economy as Millions More Vanish From It www.latintimes.com/labor-day-20...

2932d ago
Randi Weingarten 🖇️📚✊🇺🇸
@rweingarten.bsky.social

Unions are how working people expand our aspirations & build a better life. And union members were critical on 9/11 & the days after… Together, we have the power to fight for an economy that works for us all. I'm glad I got to venerate Labor Day today with our NYC labor family.

3431d ago
Michael Podhorzer
@mikepod.bsky.social

Republicans will face a drubbing in the midterms, and Dem consultants are already mistaking working-class anger at Republicans for working-class attraction to their genius "affordability" messaging. How can Dems build a durable governing coaliation that actually deserves working people's support?

2931d ago
Joe Friday I'm In Love1

What if nobody can build a durable governing coalition because there is a sizable and, often, numerically decisive chunk of the electorate which treats voting as an exercise in complaint about things which aren't treatable through politics?

Quoting this
Matt Seyfang3

Good piece by the former political director of the AFL-CIO. I think what was missing is a frank discussion of the fact that white no college voters are Trump's base and they aren't voting on economics. There's a larger problem here that goes beyond policy. Supporting labor and working people

Kate Clancy
@kateclancy.bsky.social

We are blitzing this week. We talk to every person who signs a card (and the few who don't). If you care about worker power and the organizing efforts that lead to community power, sign a union card. You get to be part of a solution!

1931d ago
Blue Virginia
@bluevirginia.bsky.social

Great to see all this blue yesterday at Buena Vista for Labor Day in deep-red Virginia bluevirginia.us/2026/09/vide...

Photo by Conrad Matiuk from Buena Vista Labor Day speeches yesterday...crowd with lots of blue even in a deep-red part of Virginia
1631d ago
JD Ryznar
@jdryznar.bsky.social

Here’s to all of us who still vote for the bosses as we grill in our backyards afforded with livable wages. May you soon see the light and vote for your own power while it’s easy. We’re close to it being hard again. Our union forefathers bled and died so we wouldn’t have to. Let’s not blow it.

2132d ago
Larry Colvin
@larrycolvin.bsky.social

J.B. Pritzker Just Dropped $20 Million to Take Back the House 170,000 pages reveal NYC lied about Ground Zero air quality, Trump's anti-union record is exposed, Pritzker launches $20M PAC, and Mamdani creates first-in-nation Office of Worker Power #Blues usdemsocialists.substack.com/p/nyc-knew-g...

1331d ago
Adam Hoffman
@adamhoffman.bsky.social

Things really got bad when Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers Union. The methods he used went on to be taught in business schools. We need to build back union power but also build a way to fight against union busting.

2532d ago
Onion Inc Union
@onionunion.bsky.social

Happy Labor Day from The Onion Union! Today, we're demanding better working conditions for CEOs. Let's give the power back to the 1%!

Text that reads: “This Labor Day, The Onion Union would like to remind our nation’s highest-paid CEOs that it’s never too late to dismantle American workers’ hard-fought labor rights. Go and get ‘em, tigers!”
1532d ago
tamara nopper
@tamaranopper.bsky.social

“New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has established the Office of Worker Power, a first-in-the-nation initiative to connect workers with education, resources, and organizations to help them form a union or demand better working conditions on the job.” Happy Labor Day! prospect.org/2026/09/07/m...

1832d ago
3 sources
prospect.orgLabor Day 2026: Record-High Popularity, Record-Low Power for America’s Unions - The American Prospectamericasworkforceradiopodcast.podbean.comLabor Day 2026: U.S. Rep. Norcross on Worker Power and Zhavoronkova on TradesFuturessummed.newsUnion Gospel Mission hosts 12th annual free Labor Day barbecue fundraiser

Related

Labor Day 2026: unions more popular but worker power remains weakculture