Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on February 3, 2008
Public Opinion Quarterly 2008 72(1):134-159; doi:10.1093/poq/nfn002
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The Polls—Trends
Labor Unions in the United States
Address correspondence to Costas Panagopoulos; e-mail: costas{at}post.harvard.edu
In this study, we analyze data on public opinion and attitudes toward labor unions from the iPOLL Databank at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (University of Connecticut), the American National Election Study, and the Current Population Survey. Despite recent developments that suggest labor unions are in decline, we find organized labor has maintained reasonably strong public support. Although the data indicate that Americans remain skeptical about how much confidence they can place in unions and their leaders, the results make clear that the public continues to recognize the need for unions to protect the rights of workers. These results hold potentially important implications for the future of organized labor in the United States.
COSTAS PANAGOPOULOS is with Department of Political Science, University of Fordham, 441 E. Fordham Rd., Faber 667, Bronx, NY 10458, USA. PETER L. FRANCIA is with Department of Political Science, East Carolina University, Brewster A-124S, Greenville, NC 27858-4353, USA. The authors are grateful to the editor and to Bob Shapiro for helpful comments and suggestions.
The survey results reported here were obtained from searches of the iPOLL Databank and other resources provided by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut.