Unionizing Young Workers: America’s Labor Uptick and Youth Outreach Strategies
研究2021-2024年美国工会增长中青年工人的作用，通过调查2022年所有工会运动及数百次工人访谈，发现青年工人推动了工会化浪潮，并识别出五种关键机制，如组织青年密集型行业、采用自下而上的组织模式等。
Scholars and practitioners agree that organized labor’s difficulty recruiting young people constitutes one of the central obstacles to union growth and revitalization. What mechanisms can overcome this impasse? This article tests competing theories of union youth outreach in light of the 2021–2024 labor union uptick in the United States. Through a survey reaching out to every union drive of 2022 and through hundreds of worker interviews, the author demonstrates that young workers have driven the US unionization surge and identifies the labor initiatives that have enabled this exceptional degree of involvement. Many theorized mechanisms for connecting with young workers proved to be either absent or relatively unimportant, such as youth sections, youth marketing, alliances with social movements, coalitions, and social justice demands. By contrast, five mutually reinforcing mechanisms were central: organizing youth-heavy industries; adopting a bottom-up organizing model; forging a “militant minority” of workplace radicals; leaning on digital tools; and spreading contagious worker self-activity.