[gcr]

You don't necessarily need an NLRB contract to get wins for employees, though the legal protection certainly helps.

I understand AWU is currently following the CWA "Solidarity Union" model: not currently seeking recognition but may choose to do so in the future.

(Disclosure: I am a member of AWU)

[Ericson2314]

There is a great line of research that part of labor's downfall in the postwar era was due to becoming to legalized/instituionalized, creating a hysteresis trap were the unions official power (laws and norms) lagged behind the underlying conditions that give it real power (labor scarcity + worker radicalization). Workers got complacent and depoliticized starting with the red scare, and edges along by shitty union leadership, and the whole Regan era turnabout was less a right-wing conspiracy and more the hysteresis delay coming to an an end.

Members-only unions and whatnot that forgo the NRLB are "riskier" in some sense, but that vary precarity / forgoing of intertia can avoid the lag and help keep the union vigilant.

See a popular exposition in https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/06/uaw-academic-workers-coll..., which is a better piece than much Jacobin stuff I might add.