ANALYSIS: Workers May Be Complaining, But Not About Their Unions

The problem with analyzing labor trends these days is that it’s too soon to tell whether havoc-ridden 2020 was an outlier or an outrider. The current headline-grabbing news about labor relations seems to focus on dramatic, “We all quit!"-type moments in the service and hospitality industries. But what if those stories are more than one-off labor-market anomalies and instead augur a whole new paradigm in how America works? If so, has this recent (and current) period of turmoil made the sea change so vast that the conventional measures no longer apply?

Take union satisfaction—that is, workers’ satisfaction with the ...