Even if the movement isn’t rebounding quite yet, green shoots are abounding—and presidential candidates ignore it at their peril.
A surge of organizing could weaken some of the forces that have made organizing difficult in recent decades. It could inhibit some of the structural changes, start to alter the political factors, and counter the aggressiveness of employers.
Union membership has been dropping since 1983. At that time about 20 percent of U.S. workers were in a union, which itself was a big drop from the 1950s, when unions represented more than one-third of American workers.
Despite an apparent upsurge in labor militancy, unions made no gains in their share of the workforce last year. Something needs to change — and fast.
Recent union contract gains against a backdrop of decades of union decline, worsening wealth inequality and broken labor laws.
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson on abortion rights, building union density, and the sham of “corporate benevolence”.
Last year, the union membership rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 10.1% — the lowest on record. The absolute number of American workers in unions did grow in 2022 — by approximately 200,000. But the number of non-union jobs grew faster.
Employers are using heavy-handed tactics to prevent workers from organizing, and U.S. labor union density is falling as a result.
Three Georgia Starbucks stores have voted to unionize, and other efforts are afoot to organize lower-wage workers.
Our infallible crystal ball reveals that 2022 will make workers want to holler.
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