Unions have grown more popular in recent years, with 16.5 million workers represented by a union in 2025—the highest share of the overall workforce in 16 years. As workers have mounted high-profile union campaigns at companies like Starbucks and Amazon, some employers have openly pushed back on those efforts, in turn becoming increasingly vocal about their opposition to unions.
New research from Cornell University indicates that a company’s stance on unions can have a measurable impact on its workforce and shape worker productivity.
In an experiment that involved asking participants to act as workers and managers, researchers found that when a company disclosed its opposition to unions, some employees took a cue from that and responded by working harder—but only if they were skeptical of unions or thought collective bargaining was not in their best interests.
“Workers use the manager’s public stance to infer how managers intend to set pay under individual bargaining,” Xinyu Zhang, an accounting professor at Cornell and coauthor of the research paper, said in a statement. “Managers’ opposition gives workers information, and that information can change their behavior.”
The workers who were already in favor of individual bargaining seemed to interpret their employer’s stance as a sign that they could negotiate higher wages if they increased their productivity. But when workers were in support of collective bargaining, their employer’s position on unions did not change their behavior, in part because that knowledge seemed simply to affirm what they already believe—that individual bargaining puts managers at an advantage.
In the experiment, workers who were in support of individual bargaining successfully negotiated wage increases. For those who favored collective bargaining, there was little change.
This research suggests that how an employer publicly responds to a union campaign can significantly influence its workforce—even without the added pressure of other tactics companies often employ when faced with organizing efforts. While most employers tend to be opposed to unions, not all of them are explicit about it.
Companies like Starbucks and Amazon have been clear on the matter in their public comments and have reportedly held captive-audience meetings, in which employers discourage workers from joining unions. Other employers, like Microsoft, have taken a more measured approach, even adopting a formal agreement to remain neutral in any future unionization efforts.
As the researchers note, workers are more split when it comes to their opinion of unions. Even with the uptick in organizing activity, unionized workers account for only a fraction of the overall workforce, with just 11.2% of workers represented by a union. But surveys show that unions have become more and more appealing to American workers; in 2025, more than 50 million people expressed a desire for a union at their company but were unable to get one.
It’s not hard to imagine why: A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute found that tripling union membership could significantly raise wages across the workforce, giving the median worker a 14.5% raise, or the equivalent of more than $7,700 per year. Over the course of a year, workers could stand to gain $1.2 trillion. For decades, worker productivity has far outpaced wage growth—a clear sign that workers don’t benefit from individual bargaining nearly as much as they might assume.
