Across the Midwest, unions are breaking through in a way they haven’t in decades

Union members and labor experts agree that a collective sense of job insecurity and frustration over wages and working conditions are driving activity in the region.
Before he was a law professor, Michael Duff was a union member. He worked as a fleet service agent who loaded bags and freight, and drove large catering trucks for a major airline. He was also the first Black shop steward of his union, Teamsters Local 732.

In 1988, hundreds of members walked off the job to protest what they considered the unfair firing of a coworker.

“That was my first exposure as a younger person of the emotion, the raw power of when workers decide, ‘We're walking off the job. Go ahead and try to stop us right?’ And that energy, that feeling is something that I've never forgotten,” said Duff, an attorney who now teaches labor law at Saint Louis University.

That feeling Duff remembers seems to be spreading, as workers not usually associated with organized labor start unionizing and long-standing unions flex their bargaining muscles.

Duff said while union membership is nowhere near its heyday in the 1950s, he has observed an uptick in interest and activity in the past five years.