![]() Suresh Naidu, an economist at Columbia University, has emerged in recent years as a leading scholar of unions in America. president who has proclaimed himself as "the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history," and the fact that unions are now more popular than they've been at any time since the 1960s.Ĭall it the union paradox: near-record-high popularity, but record-low participation. That's despite a historically tight labor market, worker dissatisfaction with their employers during the pandemic, a U.S. ![]() In short, while there was an uptick in labor organizing in 2022, we're hardly witnessing a rejuvenated movement strong enough to dramatically reverse unions' long-run decline. The number of work stoppages and approximate number of workers involved in work stoppage is considerably less than the most recent comprehensive BLS data from the 1970s." Even the authors of the ILR School report note, "the level of strike activity is lower than earlier historical eras. However, considering we live in a nation with roughly 160 million workers, the absolute number of labor actions last year remains pretty small: 424 work stoppages (417 strikes and seven lockouts). They find that strikes, for example, were up 52% in 2022 over the previous year. Alexander Colvin, the dean of the ILR school, says the data shows that something real was bubbling in the labor movement last year. Last week, researchers at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR School) released the school's annual report tracking labor actions across America. That's hardly a game-changer, but it's something. The National Labor Relations Board saw 2,510 union representation petitions filed in fiscal year 2022 - a 53% increase over the previous year. It's just that the number of non-union jobs grew faster. ![]() For one, the absolute number of American workers in unions did, in fact, grow in 2022 - by approximately 200,000. To be sure, various data makes clear that the hubbub over a union resurgence last year wasn't all hype. Only one in ten American workers is now in a union, down from nearly one in three workers during the heyday of unions back in the 1950s. This was the second year in a row that the union rate fell. Last year, the union membership rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 10.1% - the lowest on record. And their data shows that - far from a resurgence - the share of American workers in a union has continued to decline. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released its union data for 2022. Headline writers began declaring things like, " Employees everywhere are organizing" and that the United States was seeing a " union boom." In September, the White House asserted "Organized labor appears to be having a moment." Even the knights, queens, and squires at Medieval Times were jousting to join a union. ![]() Workers at Amazon warehouses, Trader Joe's, and REI were joining the fight. Employees at more than 250 Starbucks stores voted to unionize. Last year, labor unions in America looked like they were turning a corner. ![]()
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