


The organized labor renaissance waned slightly this year as union membership dipped to its lowest level ever, but unions still wield plenty of clout as both campaigns try to woo blue-collar workers.
After decades of eroding influence, labor unions had reasons to be optimistic heading into 2024. Labor drives at iconic companies such as Starbucks and Amazon, the Biden administration’s pro-union stance and increased public support for unions made labor leaders hopeful they’d turned a corner.
However, union membership continued to decline, falling to a record low of 10% by the end of 2023, according to the most recently available data from the Labor Department. The drop comes amid a red-hot labor market that saw a whopping 2.7 million jobs added last year, but the number of nonunion jobs grew at a faster pace than unionized positions.
Private sector union membership has stayed flat at 6% over the last few years and the public sector rate has dropped, even though it remains higher than the private sector, at 32.5%.
The declines come as 70% of Americans say they have a positive view of labor unions, the highest percentage in 57 years, according to a new Gallup poll.
Unions also suffered some high-profile defeats this year, especially in the South.
Workers at two Mercedes-Benz factories in Alabama voted against joining the United Auto Workers union. In Miami, teachers are weighing a vote to dismantle their union.
The National Labor Relations Board, which has become an aggressive pro-union advocate under President Biden, saw several of its rules to make it easier to organize struck down by federal courts. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks in a labor dispute. The decision makes it harder for the federal government to crack down on what it deems to be employers’ anti-union practices.
“Labor is in a gradual and continued decline. Its membership has continued to shrink, especially in the private sector, the National Labor Relations Board’s rulings are severely insufficient to compensate for the churn in annual membership and strike activity is relatively small,” said Merrick Masters, who teaches labor and political action at Wayne State University. “Labor has shown nothing to me that it is in a position to reverse the structural forces that are contributing to its decline.”
Despite the setbacks, the union vote is arguably the most hotly contested this election season.
In the battleground states of Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, roughly 15% of employees are represented by unions. That means the total number of union workers in all three states exceeded the margin of victory in those states during the 2016 and 2020 elections.
In 2020, Mr. Biden won 57% of the union vote in swing states, compared to then-President Trump’s 40%. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presidential nominee, would at least need to match Mr. Biden’s total to win this election.
“Even with a smaller percentage of union members nationally, there is a lot of clustering of union workers in the Great Lakes region of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” said Robert Bruno, director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “In a close race like this one, organized labor will really make a difference.”
Both Mr. Trump, the GOP nominee, and Ms. Harris understand their success in this election hinges on their ability to win swing union voters.
A record 20% of delegates to the Democratic National Convention this year were union members. All delegation members stayed in union hotels and almost all of the convention work in Chicago, from building sets to carpentry, was done by union workers.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain was given a prominent speaking role at the convention. In a fiery anti-Trump speech, he ripped off his sports jacket to reveal a red t-shirt that read, “Trump is a scab.”
In their first few campaign events, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have held public rallies with unions and addressed organizations ranging from the UAW to the International Association of Firefighters.
Mr. Walz, a former member of the teacher’s union, is the first union worker on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan, a Screen Actors Guild member, in 1980.
In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Ms. Harris picked up endorsements from the AFL-CIO and UAW among other influential labor organizations.
Ms. Harris still needs to define herself to unions because she doesn’t have the decades-long tight relationship with labor that Mr. Biden had. Mr. Biden spent years honing his “Union Joe” brand, repeatedly bragging that he’s the most pro-union president in history.
Mr. Masters said labor unions’ failure to save Mr. Biden from being booted off the presidential ticket illustrates their waning influence, even as both candidates seek their support. In the weeks before Mr. Biden dropped out, unions including the AFL-CIO issued statements of support for the embattled president.
“If you look back at 40 or 50 years ago, Democratic leadership would have wanted the approval of labor before dropping a candidate from a ticket,” he said. “Here they didn’t have much of a seat at the political table. It was the big donors that had a say.”
Once a reliable Democratic voting bloc, unions have splintered since Mr. Trump first ran for office. Union leadership has backed Democratic candidates, while some rank-and-file members went for Mr. Trump.
Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Pennsylvania State University, said union leadership is working very hard to get its members to support Ms. Harris by arguing that their union will be stronger economically under a Democratic administration. However, leadership hasn’t taken a position on the social and cultural issues such as immigration that have drawn workers to Mr. Trump, he said.
“These social and cultural issues are so powerful, the union members aren’t walking away [from] Mr. Trump, even as union leaders make the case that they are better off under a Democratic administration,” Mr. Clark said.
Not all union bosses have endorsed Ms. Harris. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien last month became the first labor leader in history to address the Republican National Convention in its 121-year history. He praised Mr. Trump as “one tough SOB,” and later added to the tension by noting that Democrats declined to let him speak at their convention.
But two weeks later, Mr. O’Brien lashed out at Mr. Trump, after the former president joked with Elon Musk in a conversation on X about firing striking workers. Mr. O’Brien issued a statement calling Mr. Trump’s remarks “economic terrorism.”
The Harris campaign also seized on the comments, and Mr. Fain of the UAW filed a complaint against both Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk with the NLRB, accusing them of unfair labor practices. The Harris campaign highlighted the complaint.
Mr. Trump has also worked to attract big labor. In January, he attended the Teamsters Rank-and-File Presidential Roundtable and boasted that several of his big real estate projects were built with Teamster labor. He also vowed to give union leaders “a seat at the table” in exchange for an endorsement.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.