In a Gallup Poll conducted in August 2024, a staggering 77% of Americans aged 34 and younger approve of labor unions. The Center for American Progress found Gen Z Americans to be even more supportive than Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials were at the same age. To America’s youth, the reasons behind this are obvious. The struggles of America’s youth with alarmingly high rates of clinical depression, unemployment, destitution, and lack of career fulfillment are directly correlated with the increasing dominance of monopoly capital over our lives.
Far before our generation was born, the American labor movement was squandered both internally and externally during the Cold War, especially during the McCarthy period. The rabid anti-communist sentiment flooding American media after WWII created a difficult social environment for unions to operate in, with many Americans afraid to join unions due to fears of being labelled a “communist sympathizer.” This, combined with aggressive anti-union legislation and CIA interference in the labor movement, led to the gradual decline of union membership on a national level.
Now, union membership sits at just below 10% of American workers total. However, the trade union movement’s free-fall is coming to an end.
America’s Youth understand the grave threat silence and complacency poses to our future. Young workers across the country are now taking initiative to fight Wall Street where it truly hurts: their profits. Graduate students in the United Auto Workers union, researchers and healthcare workers in the Service Employees International Union, baristas in Starbucks Workers United, and warehouse workers in the Amazon Labor Union all stand in defiance of a future slipping further from our grasp.
The bosses, in their post-Soviet euphoria and hubris, created their own enemy. By imposing the climate crisis, exorbitantly high costs of living, unbearable education costs, and few accessible career opportunities on America’s youth, the bosses did more to agitate young workers towards class consciousness than they could ever predict. As the American working class heightens itself towards forming a Popular Front against the monopoly capitalists of Wall Street, young workers are slated to play a critical role in shaping America’s working class-led future.
