Not your dad's union: America's labor movement pushed for student loan forgiveness. Next they're tackling reproductive justice and your right to quiet quit.

• Over the past year, unions have been popping up at businesses like Amazon, Starbucks, and Chipotle.
• It's part of the seismic rethinking of work, and a turn toward increased worker power.

Americans are feeling good about unions.

The latest Gallup poll has union approval at its highest level since 1965, with 71% of respondents saying they approve of labor unions. It's part of a seismic shift in the way Americans are thinking about work that's rocking the economy.

President Joe Biden is well aware. His Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh says that when union leaders come knocking, the White House answers.

"The labor movement represents workers in America, and this administration is very pro-worker," Walsh said. "When the labor movement calls on something where the president can be helpful, he is."

A recent win: Student loan forgiveness. Liz Shuler, the president of the country's largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, called on Biden to cancel student debt. It also hosted a roundtable with lawmakers like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley to discuss student debt cancellation. In late August, Biden announced that some federal borrowers would be eligible for up to $20,000 in forgiveness.

"We definitely saw that as a working person's issue," Shuler said. Labor aims to get people on the paths to good careers, she said, and that often involves some type of "educational investment."

As workers seek power that will let them redefine what they get out of work, they contemplate quiet quitting, silly little jobs, and the Great Resignation, and some see a solution in a union. They've been popping up — and, in some cases, spreading like wildfire — at big names like Amazon, Chipotle, Trader Joe's, Apple, and Starbucks.

"Young people are looking for opportunities for collective power," Walsh told Insider.

But it's not the union they heard about from their dad.

While the frustrations are the same, especially with skyrocketing inequality and differences between workers' pay and CEOs, the labor movement is suddenly expanding into previously untouched industries and corporations. At the same, it's leaning into issues that impact all workers — think student loan debt and reproductive justice — and accruing power slowly yet surely along the way.

When labor calls, lawmakers listen

Shuler, the first female president of the 12.5 million-member federation, assumed her post at the same time that President Joe Biden affirmed his intention "to be the most pro-union president, leading the most pro-union administration in American history." That gave the labor movement a unique perch — and a willing ear in the administration.

"I think a hundred years from now the Biden administration will be looked upon as a resurgence in the labor movement," Walsh said.

While union approval is high – and will likely keep rising — union membership is still low, something that labor advocates attribute to laws tilted in favor of corporations. Shuler called the law "still so badly broken that union investing consultants and corporate tactics are preventing people from accessing their rights and finding their voice."

While the House has passed the pro-labor PRO ACT, it's another piece of legislation being held up by Democrats' razor-thin majority in the Senate.

Walsh said it's "numbers thing." The labor movement needs 60 members of the Senate to move the PRO Act forward and get past the filibuster.

"They need to go out and convince 60 members why this is an important piece of legislation," Walsh said."We need to continue to convince legislators around the country and governors around the country the importance of their constituency — if they choose the opportunity, they want to organize, they should be supporting them rather than making it more difficult for them to organize."

At the same time, labor seems to have an ally in Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. Abruzzo, who previously served as counsel for the Communication Workers of America, has been quietly shaking up the state of labor law — even as the NLRB budget languishes.

Then there's the workers on the frontlines, and the power of grassroots organizing — especially among a younger generation

"I am so heartened by the fact that there are no boundaries," Shuler said. "Workers in all kinds of jobs are rising up and whether it's Starbucks and Amazon workers or museum workers and cannabis workers, they're taking a page out of the playbook of a lot of the worker activism that we've seen unions on the front lines of."

Labor organizers have widened their scope to issues that affect people outside of work

With its newfound status comes an opportunity for labor to throw its weight behind issues it may have historically not weighed in on.

In addition to being one of the major constituents pushing the president towards debt cancellation, labor is focusing attention on reproductive justice, an economic issue affecting their members, Shuler said, especially as the labor movement constitutes "the largest organization of working women in the country." She said it's necessary to have a strong presence in that debate, and to stand up for members and working families.

"When the labor movement advocated for student loan relief, it was advocating on behalf of the workers in America, not just the unionized workers," Walsh said. "When the labor movement came out and supported women's reproductive rights, they were supporting not just labor women, they were supporting reproductive rights for women in the country."

Another issue on the labor movement's radar: Violence in the workplace, especially with deadly shootings across the country. Shuler also wants to think outside of the box, and ensure labor has a voice in conversations like companies deploying new technologies, so that workers see their lives and work made easier from it.

"I want to be in places where it's surprising and that people don't expect us to be at the table, like why is this a worker issue, or why would the labor movement care about that?" Shuler said.

And, even as millions of Americans continue to reassess their jobs and quit, "if you look at the numbers in a unionized workforce, you're not seeing high rates of quit, you're seeing a respect between the employer and the union and the employee," Walsh said.

At the same time, as workers push back on managers' expectations of overwork through quiet quitting and other strategies, Shuler sees that as another push towards the labor movement.

"We've been hearing a lot in the news about this quiet quitting, because workers are just fed up with having to work in a toxic environment and have unpredictable schedules and unreliable pay and a lack of respect and dignity, frankly. I think that's what we're seeing," Shuler said. "People are finally connecting that back to the fact that forming a union is actually a way forward and a way that we can rebalance the scales."