White Collar Workers Are Considering Unionizing as Their Jobs Are Threatened

White collar and knowledge workers are facing a historic transformation that’s leaving many feeling vulnerable to layoffs and extended unemployment for the first time in their lives. So now, as various threats loom large to the desk job cohort, some professionals are considering whether to join the same labor unions that have historically addressed collective bargaining and job security issues for blue collar employees.

Though the specter of white collar employees picketing C-suites to defend their careers, some labor experts are openly wondering whether more professionals may do more serious organizing. The scenario was recently explored in a Washington Post article titled “The future of white-collar work may be unionized,” which noted “(l)aw firms, banks and tech companies are seeing an uptick in employees choosing to organize.” Interestingly, the paper didn’t mention that its own tech workers overwhelmingly voted to form a union earlier this year, despite management efforts to prevent them. Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has for years battled to stop the online marketplace’s employees from doing the same.

In any case, it was probably no coincidence that the Post’s IT workers led the push to organize.

Employees at Alphabet, Microsoft, Kickstarter, and other tech companies began organizing as far back as 2020 to gain better leverage against what they considered heavy-handed management decisions. Their unions help blunt some of the impact when the sector slashed nearly 670,000 positions in 2023 and 2024. Some estimates predict another 202,000 will be cut this year.

But layoffs and other pain points have continued multiplying, and have led tech professionals — as well as other sectors — to reconsider historical views of unionizing as being unnecessary and incompatible with their white collar status.

One factor influencing knowledge workers’ thinking is the rising trend among hiring managers to prioritize skills and experience over college degrees. Another threat comes from companies pursuing large scale layoffs of middle managers under their strategies to flatten internal hierarchies. And even businesses doing neither of those things are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) applications designed to take over many of professional-level work tasks — and perhaps even entire jobs over time.

‘Eroded both pay and prestige’

Those changes are causing many professionals to step back and rethink the advantages they’ve historically enjoyed. Those often started with riding a college diploma into a white collar job that was relatively easy to land, then pursing an ascending career exposed to few external threats. The weakening value of degrees started some professionals reconsidering the potential benefits of joining a union, which management flattening and the spreading adoption of AI is now accelerating.

“The introduction of new technologies has eroded both pay and prestige of these jobs, and I think that’s making workers feel that the kind of career path that might have been available to the generation before them is starting to seem less accessible,” Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin told the Post.

Now, it appears those same factors are leading even many lawyers to update their views of unions.

Recently diplomaed attorneys are particularly exposed to AI supplanting many of the tasks habitually assigned to entry-level employees. But those starting positions in law firms have long been critical for young lawyers to make the transition from studying law to practicing it. With those positions now vanishing, some experts think turning to unions may be one way to address that disruption.

“Unionization is a really important part of the way that we need to address the implementation of AI into law firms,” Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard Law School, told the Post.

How likely is it that a new and broad unionization push by white collar workers may materialize? Probably not too great, evidence suggests.

Despite a recent Gallup poll that found nearly 70 percent of U.S. respondents voicing approval of unions — well up from the record 48 percent low in 2009 — only 9.9 percent the workforce were members of labor organizations in 2024, according to official statistics.

True, inquiries about unionizing, and even elections by workers seeking to organize, have been rising in the last few years. But the gap between that still limited interest and actually forming or joining a union is wide — and now faces energetic efforts by the Trump administration to thwart it.

‘Eliminating middlemen is just good business’

That drive to oppose organized labor has been one of the administration’s objectives in laying off over 250,000 federal employees, whose union membership rates of 20 percent to 30 percent are far higher than private sector workers. That same hostility was behind the president’s legally questionable firing of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) members, and replacing them with political allies who’ve halted the agency’s work examining complaints against employers.

“Whew, good thing the NLRB has been gutted, anti-union leaders appointed there, and enforcement against union busting is now almost non-existent,” Amon7777 mused in response to the Post article on social media platform Reddit.

Redditor Strawbuddy was doubtful of the very notion of a large unionizing movement by white collar workers, despite their increased occupational vulnerability.

“Solidarity, but only because their individual careers are under threat,” they posted. “Safety in numbers won’t protect the professional managerial class though, because they’re still in the Liability column of a business’s cost analysis. It costs money to have managers and employees. Eliminating middlemen is just good business.”

Similar skepticism was voiced by Wade Rathke, founder of the progressive Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) advocacy group. He said the Post’s thesis merited exploration, but noted most available evidence — including some cited in the article — left him doubtful.

He also thought it would be even less likely for U.S. professionals to embrace organized labor at the very moment more unionized federal employees are suffering mass layoffs with little means to resist.

“The climate for more progress among public workers is now threatened, given the Trump administration’s anti-union obsessions and many red states adopting similar tactics,” Rathke wrote on his Chief Organizer blog.  

“Despite high curiosity and support for unionization reported in polls over recent years, especially among younger workers, converting these sentiments into success and membership growth has been difficult,” he continued. “The spirit may be ripe for unionization, but the flesh might not be as strong as we need to turn these sentiments into unions and members.”