Impacts of racial diversity and firm size on union voting behavior in Alabama

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• Author: Robert Armstrong,Michael Floren,Jason Imbrogno,Keith Malone
• Date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12413

DOI: 10.1111/irj.12413

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Impacts of racial diversity and firm size on

union voting behavior in Alabama

Robert Armstrong

†

|Michael Floren|Jason Imbrogno|

Keith Malone

Sanders College of Business and

Technology, University of North

Alabama, Florence, Alabama, USA

Correspondence

Jason Imbrogno, University of North

Alabama, UNA Box 5055, 1 Harrison

Plaza, Florence, AL 35632, USA.

Email: jimbrogno@una.edu

Abstract

Private sector unionization drives have recently

increased after decades of decline. Previous research

largely focused on predictors of unionization internal

to firms. In this study, we use historical data from 1986

to 2017 in Alabama to show that racial distribution in

the surrounding county also influences the likelihood

of successful unionization votes.

1|INTRODUCTION

Private sector unionization drives are currently back in vogue in the United States (Kallas

et al., 2023). Employees are using union membership to contribute to a sense of personal

identity, as well as utilizing union backing and union‐formation threats to advocate for

traditional workplace improvements such as increased wages, better benefits, more time off and

safer working conditions. Large employers such as Amazon, Starbucks, Home Depot, Apple,

Trader Joe's and many others have endured union votes at individual business locations. In the

first 7 months of 2022, 826 union elections took place in the country, a 45% increase over the

same period in 2021; further, the 70% success rate of those elections is far better than the 42%

success rate from the previous year (Isidore, 2022). From January through July of 2021, 239

successful unionization votes were held across the United States; but between the increased

number of elections and higher success rate of the following year, the equivalent time frame in

2022 saw 578 successful union votes held, nearly 2.5 times as many as 2021. Some unionization

drives have even garnered national media attention, such as the Amazon warehouse votes in

Staten Island, NY (Hsu, 2022) (successful) and Bessemer, AL (Palmer, 2022) (unsuccessful).

Ind. Relat. 2024;55:20–32.20

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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/irj

© 2023 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

†

Retired in May 2020.