How to Revive America's 'Golden Middle’
The erosion of unions has been decades in the making. But they're the best way to bring back a period of prosperity for the bottom 50%.
Labor is under assault.
Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The share of US workers represented by a union ended 2024 at 9.9%. Strip out public sector workers and the rate was 5.9%. Both numbers are even more stunning once you realize union representation is less now than 1934, the year before the right to organize was enshrined into law by the National Labor Relations Act. Logically, the decline is either because the desire or need to be in a union has diminished, or the law has become so weak that the right to organize is no longer protected. Although both are to blame, it’s mostly the latter.
Legal protections for organizing workers are so weak they basically doesn’t exist, a erosion of rights decades in the making that culminated in January when President Donald Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board. That left the NLRB with two members, a number insufficient for a quorum and effectively eliminating any protection for organizing workers.