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After decades of decline, US unions have a new reason for hope - younger workers.Workers in their 20s, and even in their teens, are leading ongoing efforts to unionise companies large and small, from Starbucks and REI to local cannabis dispensaries. The Alphabet Workers Union, formed last year and now representing 800 Google employees, is run by five people who are under 35.Multiple polls show union approval is high and growing among the youngest workers. And US union membership levels are even ticking upward for workers between 25 and 34, even as they decline among other age groups.Between 2019 and 2021, the overall percentage of US union members stayed flat. But the percentage of workers ages 25-34 who are union members rose from 8.8 per cent to 9.4 per cent, or around 68,000 workers, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.Young workers say they see unions as the best way to combat wage inequality and poor working conditions. For some, personal heroes like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders - a vocal labour advocate - have piqued their interest in unions. Others say the novel coronavirus pandemic caused them to rethink what they deserve from their jobs."Whatever this is isn't working," said Adriana Alvarez, 29, a McDonald's employee in Chicago. "We obviously need change."When a union organiser first approached Alvarez in 2014, she was sceptical of his goal to raise her pay to US$15 per hour. At the time, she was making US$8.50 per hour and hadn't got a raise in three years.But she got involved with the Fight for $15 labour group, organising protests and learning about her rights. McDonald's workers still aren't unionised, but she says her managers are more respectful and have stopped illegal practices, like making workers reimburse the restaurant if they accidentally accept counterfeit money. She now makes US$16.70 per hour.Like many of her peers, Alvarez didn't grow up in a union household. US union membership peaked in 1954, when 35 per cent of workers belonged to unions. By last year, that had fallen to 10.3 per cent.Some of that decline is due to shrinking numbers in sectors with high unionisation rates, like the auto industry. But states and courts have also steadily chipped away at unions' power.Twenty-seven states now have "right-to-work" laws, which prohibit a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them. And last year, the US Supreme Court struck down a 1975 California regulation that had allowed union organisers to meet with agricultural workers on company property.Against that backdrop, unions last year saw some of their biggest increases among young workers in utilities, the motion picture industry and the federal government, said Hayley Brown, a research associate with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a nonpartisan think tank.Brown said there are signs those numbers will continue to rise this year under the labour-friendly Joe Biden Administration, which issued proposals this month aimed at increasing unionisation rates for federal workers and contractors.In January, there were 170 petitions filed for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board; that was more than double the 83 filed in January 2021.