This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 28th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How are unions doing?

More importantly, is forming a union a good way for workers to negotiate a better deal.

Jarrett Score up with the Mackinoff Center says much of the breathless media coverage of unionization efforts

masks the larger reality that thousands of workers are leaving their unions on a regular basis.

In Louisville, Kentucky, where I have seen multiple local coffee shops, including my favorite one moved toward unionization

the local newspaper the Louisville Courier Journal their newsroom is going to unionize as well.

So it's worth asking with many millions of job openings in the U.S. and difficulties that businesses are having retaining people in this

sort of post-Covid environment, how do you evaluate the strength of unions today?

I think in some ways unions are becoming more of a political identifier.

So you're seeing coffee... political identifier.

So you're seeing coffee shops, you're seeing newsrooms, unionize,

and a lot of these are getting a lot of media attention,

which is making it feel like it's a bigger thing than it is.

I mean the coffee shop maybe five to ten people.

Detroit Unionized two coffee shops, one immediately shut down.

It was a small business.

Hopefully that doesn't happen to your favorite place. But I think it's kind of office

executing that this has not been a big, this isn't a big thing. We are seeing fewer union members,

we're seeing fewer companies unionize overall.

It makes total sense to me that in tight labor markets that people would want to negotiate for a better deal and because frankly in many cases they can get it.

...