More Americans support striking auto workers than car companies, an AP-NORC poll shows
More Americans sympathize with the striking auto workers than with the three big car companies that employ them
A majority of Americans support higher pay for auto workers who are on strike against Detroit's Big Three carmakers, although approval of the workers' other demands is more mixed, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The poll found that 36% of Americans sympathize with the workers in their dispute with the automakers, 9% support the automakers, and the rest back both or neither.
Support for the autoworkers fell short of the 55% support for striking Hollywood writers and actors in an AP-NORC poll conducted last month.
Still, the new poll adds to evidence of U.S. support for labor unions during a year marked by strikes in Hollywood, a walkout that was narrowly averted by Teamsters at United Parcel Service, and now the picket lines outside auto plants.
In the new AP-NORC survey, 51% say labor unions help U.S. workers while only 15% say they hurt working people. About one-third say unions help the U.S. economy, while 22% say they damage the economy.
A Gallup poll taken in August found that 67% of Americans approve of unions, down four points from 2022 but up from a low of 48% in 2009.
Rachel Collins, a fifth-grade teacher and union member in Chicago, says she hopes the UAW strike could help reverse a long decline in labor power and raise pay for workers across the economy.
“For far too long, labor has been the backbone of what we do in this country but has never been compensated,” she said. “In the last 50 years we have seen the decline of the working class and the rise of this sort of billionaire class and corporations taking and taking and not giving anything to
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