We answered a viewer’s question about the decline of unionization.
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“How come we’ve seen such a decline in unionization in the US?” That’s the question we received from one of our viewers, Cameron when we put out a call for topics to explain. It comes at an interesting time.
Earlier this year, the Amazon Labor Union won its first election at a large warehouse in New York, and more than 200 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize since baristas in Buffalo broke the seal in December 2021. The National Labor Relations Board reports that petitions for union elections are up 56 percent this year compared to 2021.
This level of energy and momentum in the labor movement is remarkable in light of the long, steep decline in union membership rates since the 1950s. Social science has limited tools for establishing what caused that decline, and different experts tend to emphasize different factors. But in the video above, we dig into a few key drivers of low union density in the US relative to other wealthy countries.
Sources:
Barry Eidlin, Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada https://barryeidlin.org/theclassidea/
Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160276/state-of-the-union
Zachary Schaller, “Decomposing the Decline of Unions: Revisiting Sectoral and Regional Shifts” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00197939221101555?journalCode=ilra&
OECD, “Collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements in OECD countries” https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/a6ebacb7-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/a6ebacb7-en
Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson https://unionstats.com/
Bloomberg Law https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/punching-in-pandemic-union-election-surge-hits-trump-era-rules-28 https://news.bloomberglaw.com/bloomberg-law-analysis/analysis-how-long-does-it-take-unions-to-reach-first-contracts
Economic Policy Institute https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/publications/private-sector-unions-corporate-legal-erosion/
Gallup https://news.gallup.com/poll/12751/labor-unions.aspx
Thomas Kochan et al “Worker Voice in America: Is There a Gap between What Workers Expect and What They Experience?” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0019793918806250
Alejandro Reuss, “What’s Behind Union Decline in the United States?” https://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2011/0311reuss2.html
Henry Farber, Bruce Western, Accounting for the Decline of Unions in the Private Sector, 1973-1998, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12122-001-1017-8
G. William Domhoff, “The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions In The U.S.” https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/history_of_labor_unions.html
Michael Goldfield and Amy Bromsen, “The Changing Landscape of US Unions in Historical and Theoretical Perspective” https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-032211-214003
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