[garciasn]

68% of Americans supposedly support unions: https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel...

Yet, ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them; a paradox.

That said, with only about ~10% of Americans being employed in a union role, it's more like the grass is greener on the other side than an actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership.

[browsingonly]

> actual understanding of the pros and cons of union membership

Many of us have worked in $MEGACORPS with substantial union representation among the employees, have seen what it does and how it works in practice, and as a result want nothing to do with it. I wasn't represented due to my job classification, but now due to my firsthand exposure to unions I absolutely never will be by choice.

No way, no how, not ever.

[OkayPhysicist]

Translated: Management ("wasn't represented due to job classification") doesn't like unions. Shocker.

[positr0n]

I know plenty of line level engineers (mostly non-software) who's main interaction with unions is things like waiting for a week to move their desk to the other wall of their cubical because that's a union job and they're not allowed to touch the Ethernet cables.

Notice the story has cubicals, how nice! Most these stories are pretty old. I suspect because there are less jobs in some big F500 campus with colocated engineering, accounting, etc and a unionized manufacturing plant all in the same place.

[cweagans]

> ~50% of Americans voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to them

Less than half of the US population voted in the last election. ~50% of Americans _who voted_ voted for the party that is diametrically opposed to unions, but that group is only ~23% of _Americans_.

[ThrowawayR2]

More voter turnout wouldn't have changed anything. From https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/26/2024-election-turno... , "The survey suggests that 'if all Americans eligible to vote in 2024 had cast ballots, the overall margin in the popular vote likely would not have been much different'"

This also matches what Democratic-leaning pollsters like David Shor have said in their own analyses.

[cweagans]

It's important to understand that what we have, we have because of a comparatively small group of people. That's important and interesting because it means you can influence the outcome of an election in two ways:

1. Get people to change sides. This is difficult: people who already vote in a particular way are unlikely to change because of external pressures (and in fact, are more likely to dig their heels in if challenged on their views); or

2. Get more people to vote. This can be challenging in its own way, but can also just boil down to logistics problems.

Whether or not 100% voter turnout would have the same results is neither here nor there. If you accept that premise + the premise that the vast majority of American voters vote down the party line for one of the major two, then you have potentially 2x the number of voters for your desired outcome. All you have to do is go find them and get them to vote.

[chung8123]

This is why one issue wedge voting works. You may vote against something you want to vote for something you want more.

[SaucyWrong]

Single-issue voting is something I consider a very large threat to the democratic process in the US, and is also something that both parties have become exceedingly good at creating in the elctorate.

The reason I consider it a threat is that it allows either party to meta-game the fact that many voters can be persuaded to vote against their own interests.

[JuniperMesos]

How could any decision that voters make about how to cast their votes be a threat to the democratic process? A voter grounding their decision about who to vote for on a single issue is democracy working as intended. If this is bad it's only bad in the sense that voters in a democracy can vote for bad people or policies - but this is not something democracy as a system does or can promise to avoid.

[Whoppertime]

I don't think it's so obvious The International Brotherhood of Teamsters didn't officially endorse any candidate for president in 2024. This was because internal polling said that their members overwhelmingly supported Trump over Harris, while it seems like the union leadership supported Harris over Trump This is not the only Union who had a difference of opinion between leadership and membership in 2024