For the first time in 25 years the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a union has increased. A report from Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research attributes the increase to large membership gains in California – over 200,000 of the 310,000 new union members were organized there – and more modest gains in northeastern states like New York and New Jersey, which were able to offset the continued decline of unionized manufacturing jobs.
The slight uptick in the unionized percentage, to 12.1% from 12.0%, was the first recorded since the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting figures in 1983, and, as the report’s authors caution, may reflect a statistical variation. The actual number of unionized workers has, after all, increased in most years since John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO on a call for a greater commitment to new organizing. However, those gains in membership could not keep pace with the new jobs added to the overall economy, causing declining percentages of union membership. But now as we slouch towards a recession, the economy is adding significantly fewer new jobs, so that union membership could actually gain as a percentage of the workforce.
But that’s only part of the story. These membership increases reflect a shift in organizing strategy to consolidate our gains in states and industries where we are relatively strong. Tens of thousands of those new union members were public sector home child care providers. Many thousands more were teachers and clerical and administrative employees in states like Kansas and New Mexico, where public sector employees recently regained the right to form unions. In the private sector, gains were made in health care and construction, where strong unions used their leverage to compel employers to recognize and deal with newly organized workers outside of the increasingly hostile and anti-union National Labor Relations Board.
This strategic shift leaves huge swaths of workers – in the South and Midwest, in private sector white collar occupations, etc. – unrepresented and with little hope of organizing. It is, however, a plan to survive and fight another day. Every newly organized workplace that wins a good contract is an object lesson to friends, family and neighbors that we can organize and win. It means more financial resources for international unions and the AFL-CIO and Change To Win to commit to organizing elsewhere. And it’s more union voters to elect a government that will reform the union-busting laws. It helps ensure that there will continue to be a union movement, for now.