CEOs who resist America's growing union wave are making a 'huge mistake' in the war for talent

• Amazon's Andy Jassy and Starbucks' interim CEO Howard Schultz are vocal on their anti-union views.
• But a growing portion of workers are unionizing, and public support for them tops 70%, per Gallup. 
• CEOs who fight unions will have trouble competing at a time when hiring is tough.

A growing portion of America's workforce is unionizing, and CEOs are not happy about it. 

Amazon's Andy Jassy and Starbucks' interim CEO, Howard Schultz, have been among the most vocal in sounding the alarm on the movement, saying unions slow company operations and negatively change the customer experience. Meanwhile, federal labor officials have accused Apple of anti-union practices and workers at Chipotle have complained about what they see as anti-union practices. 

It seems that many of these leaders are taking it personally, journalists have noted.  

America's unionization wave doesn't show signs of dissipating, and CEOs would be better suited adjusting their leadership style to meet it, especially as the war for talent continues. The new model employer needs to listen to and engage with the conversations and demands of their workers — or find themselves staring down distrustful, disgruntled employees. After all, the best leaders are the most adaptable, as Insider previously reported.

With today's tighter labor markets, companies will have to work harder to keep the people they want — and need.

The most effective leaders will recognize America's new, evolving employee-employer contract, Kate Bronfenbrenner, a senior lecturer and the director of labor-education research at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said. 

"Taking it very personally, and making it very personal, has been a huge mistake that employers have made," Bronfenbrenner told Insider. "Unionization is not a measure of an employer's failure. It's a measure that workers want things that employers can't give them and only a union can give them." 

Working with unions can mean a happier workforce that sticks around longer

Anti-union rhetoric has always had a home in the US, a country with individualistic ideals, but support for unions is at a 57-year high with more than 70% of surveyed Americans saying they approve of them, according to a Gallup poll from August. Support might be up, but union membership among US workers stood at 10.3% in 2021, about half what it was in the early 1980s, federal figures show.

CEOs — who workers have increasingly held accountable since the start of the pandemic — would be remiss to ignore rising sentiment about unions. Employees are speaking out on social media about bad workplace experiences and are leaving jobs that don't fulfill them. The Great Resignation has lost steam, but hasn't died out.   

CEOs have long viewed unions as the ultimate "bete noire," the untouchable topic, Adam Lashinsky, Fortune Magazine's former executive editor, wrote in a September op-ed about labor organizing. But that may soon need to change. 

"With today's tighter labor markets, companies will have to work harder to keep the people they want — and need," he wrote. "That might mean finding partners where they least expect them, making a hear-no-union, see-no-union attitude something they can no longer afford." 

Higher pay boosts worker retention, and unions increase wages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported non-union workers earn just 83% of what unionized workers earn.

"When more workers have unions, wages rise for union and non-union workers," Janelle Jones, the chief economist at the Department of Labor, wrote on the department's website. "The converse is also true: when union density declines, so do workers' wages."

Data the UK government published in May found that unionized workers were more likely to stay at a company for 10 years or more compared with non-unionized workers. 

Embracing unions can potentially help CEOs combat labor shortages and increase retention, according to the left-leaning think tank Brookings Institution. In a still-tight labor market where workers might have few qualms about quitting, companies could have little choice but to embrace employees' demands.

"Is going union going to cost the company? Yes," Bronfenbrenner said. "But there are other measures — if you have a union, you'll have lower turnover, workers will be more productive. You're less likely to see your best workers quit."