U.S. Labor Unions

Their influence is felt from factory floors to major ports and modern newsrooms. Politicians either condemn their demands or crave their endorsements. And their membership today sits at a historic low. Ever since the U.S. industrialized in the late 1800s, unions have been organizing workers in search of better wages, benefits and employment conditions, and scholars have been arguing about their social and economic impact. Do they enhance or impede productivity? Strengthen or distort labor markets? Improve state and local governments, or saddle them with debt? As American workers face stagnant wages and widening income inequality, those debates are intensifying.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court found that states cannot require public employees who opt out of union membership to nonetheless help pay for collective bargaining undertaken on their behalf. The court had deadlocked over a similar case in 2016. The decision is expected to reduce the funds unions use to support their members and expand recruitment efforts. And it is likely to cut into their political power, since they'll have less to spend supporting (mostly Democratic) candidates. The court’s decision was another blow to a system that’s been in decline for years. In 2017, just 10.7 percent of wage and salary workers in the U.S. belonged to a union; almost half the rate in 1983. So-called right-to-work laws, which ban any requirement for employees to pay union dues or fees, are already in place in more than half the states, including the traditional union strongholds of Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. In the public sector, where the membership rate has hovered at about 35 percent, unions were already feeling pressure to agree to pay, pension and health-care cuts. There have been a few bright spots: a string of recent successful unionization campaigns by journalists at the Los Angeles Times, Vox Media and MTV News, and a series of teacher strikes in states including West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Colorado that led to salary increases.