Omaha Steve's Labor Group

Unions had some big wins last year. This includes the UAW victory with 5,000 workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, 27,000 Fairfax County, VA school employees who organized a union, and 10,000 nurses at the Corewell hospital chain in Michigan organized with the Teamsters. The number of organized graduate student workers continues to increase and has more than doubled since 2012. There were also gains in major contracts after strikes by the Machinists at Boeing and the east coast Longshore workers, and a strong strike vote of American Airlines flight attendants. And the Starbucks organizing continues, with over 500 store election wins in the last few years. The overall increase in union elections, wins and strikes compared to a few years ago is really encouraging and exciting.

Some more good news is that unions are extremely popular, with a 70% approval rating measured by Gallup in their annual poll, and union approval rates at 65% or higher for the last five years. Moreover, a major survey several years ago found that about half of all non-union workers want to be in a union, which is tens of millions of workers.

But all of this increased organizing and strike activity, and high union popularity, has not yet turned around the decline of the union membership rate. A major reason is that the obstacles for successful organizing remain high. It’s difficult to organize due to intense and routine employer union busting. Employers were charged with violating the law in over 40% of union elections, and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually on “union avoidance” consultants.

An Economic Policy Institute analysis of the recent union membership numbers says,

The disconnect between the growing interest in unionization and declining unionization rates can be explained by the fact that there are powerful forces blocking the will of workers: aggressive opposition from employers combined with labor law that is so weak that it doesn’t truly protect workers’ right to organize.