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The share of American workers in unions fell to a record low, even as unions added more workers in 2023, a year marked by high-profile strikes including auto workers, Hollywood writers and actors, and Kaiser health care workers.
Union membership rates fell by a tenth of a percentage point last year to a new low of 10 percent, the Labor Department said Tuesday, while total union membership in the United States rose by 139,000 last year, offset by gains in the private sector Losses of public sector jobs.
The decline in union membership rates comes as the labor market added a whopping 2.7 million jobs in 2o23, with non-union jobs growing faster than union jobs.
The decline in 2023 is due to a decline in union membership in the public sector to 32.5 percent, data shows, where union density is still about five times higher than in the private sector. This came as some states pushed to restrict or ban government workers' union rights. The private sector union membership rate remained stable at 6 percent because private sector employment growth was so strong.
The share of Americans in unions hit an earlier low in 2022 as a booming labor market emerging from the worst of the pandemic created even more jobs.
The decline in union membership rates, a widely used indicator of union power, has continued since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting data in 1983. At their peak in the 1950s, unions represented more than one in three workers in the United States.
The new data also complicates President Biden's self-proclaimed record as the most “union-friendly” president in the country and his emphasis on creating union jobs. Among his biggest achievements for the labor movement is approving trillions of dollars in spending on infrastructure, semiconductors and climate packages that encourage companies to hire union workers.
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The decline of the US labor movement stands in stark contrast to increasing signs that Americans are on the side of unions. According to Gallup polls, support for unions has surged over the past decade, reaching 67 percent last year after hitting a record low during the Great Recession. In fact, according to Bloomberg Law's work stoppage database, 2023 was one of the three largest strike years since 1990. And a new wave of successful organizing also brought victories at previously non-union companies like Starbucks, Trader Joe's, Wells Fargo and REI.
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Research shows that union workers earn about 10 to 15 percent higher wages than non-union workers in similar positions.
That disparity is largely due to how difficult it has become for American workers to join unions, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. Union formation is often an arduous process that can take months or even years . When companies are founded, the positions are initially non-unionized. Employees can obtain union status through democratic elections, usually held at one workplace at a time.
To maintain union membership, you have to be “really active.” [union] We are just organizing to keep up with the natural fluctuation in our job market,” Shierholz said. “It’s a long fight that goes on and on.”
Adding to the challenges, U.S. labor law is “heavily biased against workers,” Shierholz added, with current penalties for illegal retaliation against workers serving little as a deterrent to employers seeking to suppress union activity. Recent efforts to secure initial union contracts at Amazon and Starbucks have stalled amid corporate opposition. Starbucks disputes findings by the National Labor Relations Board that it refused to negotiate in good faith.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said falling union membership numbers suggest unions are not as popular as the Biden administration has claimed and criticized the White House for the “put.”[ting] His thumb is firmly on the scale for unions above all others.”
Union membership rates remained higher for men at 10.5 percent than for women at 9.5 percent, although this gap has narrowed over the years. The percentage of black workers in unions, at 11.8 percent, remained higher than union membership rates for white workers (9.8 percent) and other racial groups.