What Are the Major Labor Unions?
Today, most labor unions in the United States are members of one of two larger umbrella organizations:
- The American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); or
- The Change to Win Federation, which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005-2006.
Both organizations advocate policies and legislation favorable to workers in the United States and Canada, and take an active role in politics favoring the Democratic party but not exclusively so.
The AFL-CIO is especially concerned with global trade and economical issues.
How Are Labor Unions Regulated?
- Private sector union members are tightly regulated by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), passed in 1935.
- Public sector unions are regulated partly by federal and partly by state laws.
What is the State of Labor Union Membership Today?
Union membership had been declining in the United States since 1954. In 2007, the labor department reported the first increase in union memberships in 25 years and the largest increase since 1979.
Most of the recent gains in union membership have been in the service sector, while the number of unionized employees in the manufacturing sector has declined. Most of the gains in the service sector have come in West Coast states like California where union membership is now at 16.7%, compared with a national average of about 12.1%.
Historically, the rapid growth of public employee unions since the 1960s has served to mask an even more dramatic decline in private-sector union membership. Although most industrialized countries have seen a drop in unionization rates, the drop in union density (the unionized proportion of the working population) has been more significant in the United States than elsewhere.
In general the public sector unions have shown robust growth rates because wages and working conditions are set through negotiations with elected local and state officials. In such settings, the unions' political power thus comes into play. Unlike corporations, the local government cannot threaten to move elsewhere, nor is there any threat from foreign competition.
How Does the Public View Labor Unions?
Public approval of unions climbed during the 1980s much as it did in other industrialized nations, but declined to below 50% for the first time in 2009 during the Great Recession.
It's not clear if this is a long-term trend or a function of a high unemployment rate, which historically correlates with lower public approval of labor unions.
One explanation for loss of public support is simply the lack of union power. No longer do a sizable percentage of American workers belong to unions or have family members who do. Unions no longer carry the "threat effect:" the power of unions to raise wages of non-union shops by virtue of the threat of unions to organize those shops.
Unions have become an issue in the 2008-10 economic crisis with the two of the largest automakers receiving $85 billion in loans in order to stay viable. Some conservatives have blamed the near bankruptcy on unions and their costly labor agreements, including pension and health plans that put the U.S. automakers at a disadvantage to foreign companies. Others point out that the United Auto Workers has made extensive concessions to the car companies over the last 20 years in order to help the companies remain competitive, and allege that the automakers' recent troubles are better ascribed to other factors.
How Did Ronald Reagan's Influence Union Membership?
Most unions were strongly opposed to Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
On August 3, 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) union—which had supported Reagan—rejected the government's pay raise offer and sent its 16,000 members out on strike shutting down the nation's commercial airlines. They demanded a reduction in the work week to 32 from 40 hours, doubling of wages, a $10,000 bonus, and early retirement.
Federal law forbade such a strike, and the Transportation Department implemented a backup plan (of supervisors and military air controllers) to keep the system running. The strikers were given 48 hours to return to work, otherwise they would be fired and banned from ever again working in a federal capacity.
A fourth of the strikers came back to work, but 13,000 did not. The strike collapsed, PATCO vanished, and the union movement as a whole suffered a major reversal, which accelerated the decline of membership across the board in the private sector.