Ohio workers have stepped up efforts to unionize since 2021, filing more than three times as many petitions with the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency said this week.
Nationally, petitions to unionize doubled during the same time period, the federal agency reported, with the largest increase coming from states in the Midwest.
The NLRB received 38 petitions to form unions in Ohio workplaces during the 2021 fiscal year. By this year, the number had jumped to 124, an increase of 226%.
Workers who want representation usually contact a union with their intent. The union then files a petition with a regional office of the labor board, which is the independent agency in charge of conducting union elections.
Leonard DiCosimo, who heads the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, told Signal Cleveland that he believes that the pandemic helped to spur union growth in Greater Cleveland.
It disrupted the workplace, especially for essential workers, who were often required to put in extra hours and didn’t have the option of working remotely. Many nonessential employees found themselves in workplaces where colleagues were laid off, which shifted more work on remaining staff. This left fed-up workers looking for solutions.
“Workers realized that there are important tools that they have in federal [labor] law, and they are starting to use them,” he said. “Activism has been increasing in organized labor. ”
DiCosimo said having a president who supports unions probably also played a role. Many consider President Joe Biden among the most pro-labor presidents. He walked the picket line with striking autoworkers.
Most organizing in Ohio has occurred among service workers, DiCosimo said. This is a broad category that includes retail and office workers and even those in education and healthcare.
Greater Cleveland workplaces that unionized in the last four years include the clinical and advocacy staff at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Local Starbucks and REI Co-op workers organized as part of national organizing efforts.
DiCosimo sees the trend in unionization continuing, due partly to the values of younger workers.
“The younger-generation worker has more of a focus on work-life balance and wants to achieve it in the workplace,” he said
NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said in a release that union petitions have risen sharply because of workers’ growing familiarity with labor laws.
“The surge in cases we’ve received in the last few years is a testament to workers knowing and exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act and to our board agents’ accessibility and respectful engagement with them,” she said.
In the same time period, workers also filed more complaints, called unfair labor practice charges, against their employers. Unions frequently file such charges against an employer during negotiations, which can take months or years for a first contract. Unions also often file them while organizing workers. In Ohio, 820 unfair labor practice charges were filed during the 2024 fiscal year, an increase of 16% compared to 2021, according to the labor board. Nationally, such charges increased 52%.
“Sometimes management groups don’t understand the nuances of labor law well enough, and it leaves them exposed to charges,” DiCosimo said.
