Mellman: Voters support strikers, back more pay for average worker

With the Hollywood strike apparently near settlement, and the auto strike continuing, Republicans like Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) are channeling Ronald Reagan — if workers are striking, fire them. 

The GOP, and perhaps labor’s corporate interlocutors, apparently don’t realize how much has changed since Reagan’s infamous confrontation with striking air traffic controllers, whom he did fire.   

Unlike in the 1980s, Americans now stand firmly behind organized labor.  

Like other workers, UAW members brought massive wealth to their CEOs, whose compensation skyrocketed by 40 percent, while stockholders benefited from $66 billion in dividends and stock buybacks.  

Company profits nearly doubled in the last decade, rising to an expected $32 billion this year, amounting to nearly a quarter of a million dollars annually for each worker covered by UAW contracts.

To help save the auto industry, in 2009 workers made vast concessions, including suspending never reinstated cost-of-living increases.  

The result: While profits, CEO pay and shareholder value all increased, average real hourly earnings for auto workers fell by 19 percent since 2008. 

It’s no wonder the UAW is demanding a better contract and is now on the picket line to get it.   

In the ’80s, voters sided with Reagan, today they support the unions. 

By 59 percent to 30 percent, Americans approved of Reagan firing striking air traffic controllers.   

By an even greater 40-point margin (68 percent to 28 percent), voters said the controllers’ union should not even be permitted to strike.

Public opinion is radically different today. 

Though never unpopular, labor unions reached a nadir of good feeling in 2009, when 48 percent held a favorable view of them. 

Reaching that low point was the result of a long slow decline from 75 percent favorable in the 1950s, to 55 percent around the time of the air traffic controllers strike, to a low of 48 percent in 2009.  

That trajectory changed in 2010, when the image of unions began an upward trend, hitting 67 percent favorable this summer, in Gallup’s data. 

More specifically, IPSOS polling found 58 percent support the auto workers strike, while only 31 percent oppose it. Democrats and independents overwhelmingly back the strikers (72 percent and 63 percent, respectively), with Republicans evenly split (48 percent support, 47 percent oppose). 

Similarly, 60 percent support the Hollywood writers and actors strike, with just 27 percent opposed. Here too, Democrats and independents are overwhelmingly supportive (79 percent and 61 percent). Republicans divide evenly with 46 percent on each side.  

That last fact bears repeating — half of grassroots Republicans support the strikes called by the UAW and the writers and actors. 

Americans not only back the strikers and their unions, but also the principles motivating them.  

Sixty-nine percent (69 percent) favor workers striking to get a greater share of the profits their companies earn, while two-thirds agree that “Pay raise percentages and bonuses for the average worker and executive should be aligned so that if a CEO receives a 25% raise, the average worker would also see a 25% raise.” 

Americans clearly recognize the benefits won by unions flow to everyone, as, by 61 percent to 24 percent, they believe “Labor unions have improved the quality of life for all working Americans.” 

Voters have long lamented what they see as the collapse of the country’s middle class. 

In their telling, large corporations have played a central role in the drama, to big business’ benefit and to the detriment of their employees.  

Americans also understand the central role unions played in securing better pay, decent benefits and improved working conditions for their members, which helped raise the floor for everyone else.  

Republicans have reneged on President Reagan’s commitment to a strong national defense, adopting appeasement of Vladimir Putin as their foreign policy banner.  

If they are going to turn their backs on the president they once revered, they’d be much wiser to abjure Reagan’s hostility to labor unions. 

At the same time, automakers, television and film studios, and other corporations need to recognize the public — their customers — back their workers, not them.  

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.