POLL: Has the Great Resignation™️, Quiet Quitting™️ and the flurry of union organizing activity reached their peak?
Let us know what your observations are and what you think.
Has the Great Resignation™️, Quiet Quitting™️ and the flurry of union organizing activity that we’ve all been seeing over the last year or so reached their zenith…or their peak? Are they tapering off?
Against a backdrop of recession-related headlines, here are some of the headlines over the last few weeks that leads us to think some balance may be returning:
Forbes: Not Quietly Quitting But Quietly Returning, Older Workers Are Changing Work And Retirement
Insider: RIP, quiet quitting — layoff fears have workers back to the grind
Insider: Over half of US workers surveyed want to work overtime or get extra shifts to make more money as cost-of-living expenses continue to rise
On the labor front, while there is plenty of activity, there are these two anecdotal facts:
At Amazon, unions—ALU and RWDSU—have now lost three out of four elections this year.
And, more recently, from the Wall Street Journal: Starbucks Union Expansion Slows a Year Into Labor Drive
Twelve Starbucks stores petitioned for representation by the Starbucks Workers United union in September, down from a peak of 71 in March, National Labor Relations Board records show. The eight petitions filed in August marked the smallest number since December, when the first Starbucks cafe voting to unionize led to a wave of other locations seeking elections. [Emphasis added.]
Again, while there is certainly plenty of union organizing activity occurring across the country, and this is purely anecdotal, the question is: Has it peaked?
I think it's hard to say. There are some intangibles on an organizing campaign that are difficult (for me anyway) to track on a macro-level: things like mood/feeling of momentum, a broad feeling of unity/purpose, agitation. On some level the agitation post-COVID has seemingly waned, but I think it's more likely that workers now relate to work in a fundamentally different way than they did pre-COVID. The 'anti-work' sentiment has really bloomed and overall support for unions has risen; the economic situation is far worse than it was before for many workers.
Whether that will translate into on-the-ground organizing gains in recognition or contractual wins remains to be seen, and if I had to hazard a guess I would say we're about to see a tapering off. But I think there will likely be another upsurge yet as workers and unions rebound and try out new strategies.
This recent Organizing Work article has some good thoughts on changing how we think about and measure strike waves: https://organizing.work/2022/10/have-we-learned-anything-since-striketober%ef%bf%bc/