Despite U.S. Chamber of Commerce propaganda, the nation’s small business owners recognize the value of employees forming a union, according to a new survey by Americans Rights at Work (ARAW). The survey was released yesterday, the same day the Chamber opened its annual small business summit.

Some 80 percent of the small business owners and self-employed individuals surveyed agreed that “strong unions make the free market system stronger.” A significant majority—54 percent—strongly agreed.

ARAW Executive Director Kimberly Freeman Brown says:

We are learning that small business owners across America support the rights of employees to organize unions, believing not only that it makes good business sense, but also that strong unions make the free market system stronger.

A full 69 percent of the respondents said it was very important to their businesses that “Congress enact legislation that rewards responsible employers who respect their workers’ right to join a union.”

Brown added:

Small business leaders are showing us that there is a path to a “win-win” economy in America. Employers and workers can both generate success and share in the rewards of their hard work together.

The online survey included 1,055 respondents who identify themselves as small business owners or self-employed individuals. Click here to read the full results of the survey, “Surveying the Small Business Owner: The Value of Unions In America.”

Among other results, the survey found:

• Some 52 percent of small business owners express strong concern that “unions have been weakened so much that our economy has actually been hurt.”
• Nearly three out of five—58 percent—strongly agreed that “labor unions are necessary to protect the working person.”
• A huge 72 percent strongly agreed that “a good business person can make a profit and respect their workers’ choice to form a union.”

As one politically independent small business owner in Virginia said:

When workers form unions, they can secure benefits and rights in the workplace, including a decent wage and health care. They have economic and job stability. Unions lift workers and workers lift the economy. It’s as simple as that.

*This post originally appeared in AFL-CIO blog on May 18, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: James Parks had his first encounter with unions at Gannett’s newspaper in Cincinnati when his colleagues in the newsroom tried to organize a unit of The Newspaper Guild. He saw firsthand how companies pull out all the stops to prevent workers from forming a union. He is a journalist by trade, and worked for newspapers in five different states before joining the AFL-CIO staff in 1990. He has also been a seminary student, drug counselor, community organizer, event planner, adjunct college professor and county bureaucrat. His proudest career moment, though, was when he served, along with other union members and staff, as an official observer for South Africa’s first multiracial elections. Author photo by Joe Kekeris.