COMP NEWS – Hourly wage workers are increasingly dissatisfied with their pay, leading to an increasing interest in unionization, according to a recent survey.
Between the lack of flexibility and low wages, hourly workers seem to get the short end of the stick in the U.S. labor market — have they finally had enough?
According to workforce management platform Legion Technologies, only 50% of hourly workers believe their employers genuinely care about their experience on the job, and 42% report that their employer has done nothing to improve their workplace in the last 12 months. This dissatisfaction comes with consequences: While under 10% of employees reported a unionization effort at their organization this year, nearly 30% of workers wish there had been a labor union movement at their company.
If the employee experience continues to worsen into next year, those wishes may become action, says Traci Chernoff, senior director of employee engagement at Legion Technologies.
“It comes from the dissatisfaction in employee experience,” she says. “We know that when employees are happy, they’re having a great experience and they feel that their employers are listening to them, there really isn’t as much of an appeal when it comes to unionization.”
Workers have primarily cited poor compensation and benefits as reasons to explore unionization, as well as chronically bad work-life balance.
According to Legion, poor wages, unsatisfactory benefits and bad work-life balance were the top three drivers of unionization. But beyond the obvious — namely, improving compensation — Chernoff emphasizes flexibility as key to a happy employee experience. And while many frontline workers can’t necessarily work from home, Legion found that their desire for flexibility was not the same flexibility sought out by office workers. Notably, 55% of respondents said increased flexibility around shift work would persuade them to change jobs.
To read more about why hourly workers are disappointed with their compensation, click here.
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