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Labor unions in the United States

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Labor unions in the United States are legally recognized as representatives of workers in many industries. The most prominent unions are among public sector

Public sector

The public sector is a part of the state that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government, whether national, regional or local/municipal....

employees such as teachers and police. Activity by labor union

Trade union

A trade union is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas, such as working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts with employers...

s in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

today centers on collective bargaining

Collective bargaining

In organized labor, collective bargaining is the method whereby workers organize together to meet, converse, and negotiate upon the work conditions with their employers normally resulting in a written contract setting forth the wages, hours, and other conditions to be observed for a stipulated...

over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership and on representing their members if management attempts to violate contract provisions. Although much smaller compared to their peak membership in the 1950s, unions also remain an important political factor (especially within the Democratic Party

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. It is the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world. In the U.S...

), both through mobilization of their own memberships and through coalitions with like-minded activist organizations. Today most unions are aligned with one of two larger umbrella organizations: the AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO

The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL-CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States and Canada, made up of 65 national and international unions, together representing more than 10 million workers. It...

and the Change to Win Federation

Change to Win Federation

The Change to Win Federation is a coalition of American labor unions originally formed in 2005 as an alternative to the AFL-CIO. The coalition is associated with strong advocacy of the organizing model.-New Unity Partnership:...

, which split from the AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO

in 2005. Both advocate policies and legislation on behalf of workers in the United States and Canada, and take an active role in politics. The AFL-CIO

AFL-CIO

is especially concerned with global trade issues.
American union membership in the private sector has in recent years fallen under 9% — levels not seen since 1932. In another example, Construction trades

Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO

The Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO is a constitutionally mandated department of the AFL-CIO. It was founded on February 10, 1908, as a way to overcome the jurisdictional conflicts occurring in the building and construction trade unions...

now only represent approximately 14% of the labor market. The inability to prevent non-union companies from taking significant market share

Market share

Market share, in strategic management and marketing is, according to Carlton O'Neal, the percentage or proportion of the total available market or market segment that is being serviced by a company. It can be expressed as a company's sales revenue divided by the total sales revenue available in...

has undercut union membership.

American unions remain an important political factor, both through mobilization of their own memberships and through coalitions with like-minded activist organizations around issues such as immigrant rights, trade policy, health care, and living wage

Living wage

Living wage is a term used to describe the minimum hourly wage necessary for shelter and nutrition for a person for an extended period of time...

campaigns. Unions allege that employer incited opposition (including engaging in what is commonly termed "union-busting": running "anti-union" campaigns, employing "union-busters" - a.k.a. "union avoidance" consultants, or engaging in unfair labor practices, like firing workers who support the union, which is illegal) has contributed to this decline in membership.

Unions are currently trying to reduce employers' influence over workers' decisions to be represented by a union by advocating new federal legislation that would allow workers to elect union representation by signing cards, a process often referred to as card check

Card check

Card check is a method for American employees to organize into a labor union in which a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards," stating they wish to be represented by the union...

recognition. This proposed legislation is known as the Employee Free Choice Act

Employee Free Choice Act

The Employee Free Choice Act is a bill presently being considered in the United States Congress. Its text states that it would "amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory...

. Under this proposed Act, once a majority of employees in a workplace have signed a card, the employer will be obligated to make a good-faith effort to bargain a contract with the union. Significantly, the card signing is to be performed in front of a union representative, who can identify the signer. The current process established by federal law requires at least 30% of employees to sign cards for the union, then wait 45 to 90 days for a federal official to conduct a secret ballot election in which 50% plus one of the employees must vote for the union in order to obligate the employer to bargain. Unions report that, under the present system, many employers use the 45 to 90 day period to conduct anti-union campaigns. Since the 2008 elections, the Employee Free Choice Act now has the support of majorities in the House and Senate, and of the President.

Labor unions today

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

(AFL-CIO) or the Change to Win Federation

Change to Win Federation

, which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005. 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

AFL-CIO

is especially concerned with global trade issues.

Recently unions have become a larger issue within the 2008 "Economic Crisis" with the three largest automakers seeking $50 Billion in loans in order to stay viable. According to some Senators 'costly labor agreements' including pension and health plans put the U.S. automakers at a disadvantage to foreign companies resulting in their collapse. Others point out that the United Auto Workers has made extensive concessions to the car companies over the last twenty years in order to help the companies remain competitive, and allege that the automakers' recent troubles are better ascribed to other factors.

Private sector union members are tightly regulated by the National Labor Relations Act

National Labor Relations Act

The National Labor Relations Act is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector that labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands...

(NLRA), passed in 1935. The law is overseen by the National Labor Relations Board

National Labor Relations Board

The National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union related situations or instances of...

(NLRB), an independent federal agency

Independent agencies of the United States government

Independent agencies of the United States federal government are those agencies that exist outside of the federal executive departments...

. Public sector unions are regulated partly by federal and partly by state laws. In general they have shown robust growth rates, for wages and working conditions are set through negotiations with elected local and state officials. The unions' political power thus comes into play, and of course the local government cannot threaten to move elsewhere, nor is there any threat from foreign competition. In California the public sector unions have been especially successful.

To join a traditional labor union, workers must either:

be given voluntary recognition from their employer or
have a majority of workers in a "bargaining unit" vote for union representation.

In either case, the government must then certify the newly formed union. Other forms of unionism include minority unionism, Solidarity unionism

Solidarity unionism

Solidarity unionism is a model of labour organizing in which the workers themselves formulate strategy and take action against the company directly without mediation from government or paid union representatives...

, and the practices of organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World

The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a...

, which do not always follow traditional organizational models.

Public sector worker unions are governed by labor laws and labor boards in each of the 50 states. Northern states typically model their laws and boards after the NLRA and the NLRB. In other states, public workers have no right to establish a union as a legal entity. (About 40% of public employees in the USA do not have the right to organize a legally established union.)

Once the union has won the support of a majority of the bargaining unit and is certified in a workplace, it has the sole authority to negotiate the conditions of employment. However, under the NLRA, if a minority of employees voted for a union, those employees can then form a union which represents the rights of only those members who voted for the union. This minority model was once widely used, but was discarded when unions began to consistently win majority support. Unions are beginning to revisit the "members only" model of unionism because of new changes to labor law which unions view as curbing workers' ability to organize.

The employer and the union write the terms and conditions of employment in a legally binding contract. When disputes arise over the contract, most contracts call for the parties to resolve their differences through a grievance process to see if the dispute can be mutually resolved. If the union and the employer still cannot settle the matter, either party can choose to send the dispute to arbitration

Arbitration

Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution , is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, wherein the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons , by whose decision they agree to be bound...

, where the case is argued before a neutral third party.

In the 1940s and 1950s links to organized crime were discovered in U.S. unions, hurting their image.

Since the 1970s, union membership has been steadily declining in the private-sector while growing in the public sector.

Right-to-work statutes

Right-to-work law

Right-to-work laws are statutes enforced in twenty-two U.S. states, mostly in the southern or western U.S., allowed under provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibit agreements between trade unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues or "fees" a condition of employment,...

forbid unions from negotiating agency shop

Agency shop

An agency shop is a form of union security agreement where the employer may hire union or non-union workers, and employees need not join the union in order to remain employed. However, the non-union worker must pay a fee to cover collective bargaining costs...

s. Thus, while unions do exist in "right-to-work" states, they are typically weaker.

Members of labor unions enjoy "Weingarten Rights

Weingarten Rights

In 1975 the United States Supreme Court, in the case of NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., , upheld a NLRB decision that employees have a right to union representation at investigatory interviews...

." If management questions the union member on a matter that may lead to discipline or other changes in working conditions, union members can request representation by a union representative. Weingarten Rights

Weingarten Rights

In 1975 the United States Supreme Court, in the case of NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., , upheld a NLRB decision that employees have a right to union representation at investigatory interviews...

are named for the first Supreme Court decision to recognize those rights.

The NLRA goes farther in protecting the right of workers to organize unions. It protects the right of workers to engage in any "concerted activity" for mutual aid or protection. Thus, no union connection is needed. Concerted activity "in its inception involves only a speaker and a listener, for such activity is an indispensable preliminary step to employee self-organization."

Membership

Union membership had been steadily declining in the US since 1983. 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%
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012503076.html

Union density (the percentage of workers belonging to unions) has been declining since the late 1940s, however. Almost 36% of American workers were represented by unions in 1945. 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.

At the apex of union density in the 1940s, only about 9.8% of public employees were represented by unions, while 33.9% of private, non-agricultural workers had such representation. In this decade, those proportions have essentially reversed, with 36% of public workers being represented by unions while private sector union density had plummeted to around 7%. Recently, workers have increasingly chosen union membership. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent survey indicates that union membership in the US has risen to 12.4% of all workers, from 12.1% in 2007. Private sector union membership has rebounded as well, increasing from 7.5% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2008.

Labor Education Programs

In the US, labor education programs such as the Harvard Trade Union Program created in 1942 by Harvard University professor John T. Dunlop

John Thomas Dunlop

John Thomas Dunlop was a U.S. administrator and labor scholar.He was the Secretary of Labor between 1975 and 1976. He was also Director of the U.S. Cost of Living Council from 1973-1974, Chairman of the U.S.Commission on the Future of Worker/Management Relations from 1993-1995 and arbitrator and...

sought to educate union members to deal with important contemporary workplace and labor law issues of the day. The Harvard Trade Union Program is currently part of a broader initiative at Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School

Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. HLS typically ranks among the top law...

called the Labor and Worklife Program that deals with a wide variety of labor and employment issues from union pension investment funds to the effects of nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology, shortened to "nanotech", is the study of the control of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size.Nanotechnology is very diverse,...

on labor markets and the workplace.

Jurisdiction

Labor union

Trade union

s use the term jurisdiction to refer to their claims to represent workers who perform a certain type of work and the right of their members to perform such work. For example, the work of unloading containerized cargo at United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

ports, which both the International Longshore and Warehouse Union

International Longshore and Warehouse Union

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii and Alaska, and in British Columbia, Canada. It also represents hotel workers in Hawaii, cannery workers in Alaska, warehouse workers throughout...

and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have claimed rightfully should be assigned to workers they represent. A jurisdictional strike

Jurisdictional strike

Jurisdictional strike is a concept in United States labor law that refers to a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to unorganized workers...

is a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to such job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to unorganized workers. Jurisdictional strikes occur most frequently in the United States in the construction industry.

Unions also use jurisdiction to refer to the geographical boundaries of their operations, as in those cases in which a national or international union allocates the right to represent workers among different local unions based on the place of those workers' employment, either along geographical lines or by adopting the boundaries between political jurisdictions.

Declining Union Density: Disaggregating the Effect of Globalization

As noted above, the relative strength and size of unions in the United States has receded since the 1970s. 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. Popular explanations that pin this decline to a reduced popularity of unionization among workers and the general public appear to be misguided. In fact, public approval of unions climbed between 1981 and 1988, with 61% of Americans approving of unions in 1988. The rate of public confidence in the United States during this same time differed little from the analogous rate in other industrialized nations (Sexton, 2003). Furthermore, dropping unionization rates cannot be attributed entirely to changing market

Market

A market is any one of a variety of different systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby persons trade, and goods and services are exchanged, forming part of the economy. It is an arrangement that allows buyers and sellers to exchange things...

structures. In fact, scholars have shown the tremendous complexity inherent in explaining why this decline of union density.

A broad range of forces have been identified as potential contributors to the drop in union density across countries. Sano and Williamson (2008) outline quantitative studies that assess the relevance of these factors across countries. The first relevant set of factors relate to the receptiveness of unions’ institutional environments. For example, the presence of a Ghent system

Ghent system

The Ghent system is the name given to an arrangement in some countries whereby trade/labor unions have the main responsibity for welfare payments, especially unemployment benefits, rather than a government or employers....

(where unions are responsible for the distribution of unemployment insurance) and of centralized collective bargaining (organized at a national or industry level as opposed to local or firm level) have both been shown to give unions more bargaining power and to correlate positively to higher rates of union density. Furthermore, unions have enjoyed higher rates of success in locations where they have greater access to the workplace as an organizing space (as determined both by law and by employer acceptance), and where they benefit from a corporatist relationship to the state and are thus allowed to participate more directly in the official governance structure. Moreover, the fluctuations of business cycles, particularly the rise and fall of unemployment rates and inflation, are also closely linked to changes in union density (Sano and Williamson, 2008).

The relatively coherent scholarly perspective on the role of institutional openness to organized labor in determining union strength is not mirrored in the analysis of political and economic factors. For example, while Brady (2007) shows that political parties

Political Parties

Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 , and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy...

play an expected role in determining union strength, with left-wing governments generally promoting greater union density, other scholars contest this finding by pointing out important counterexamples and explaining the reverse causality inherent in this relationship (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 1999).

More recently, as unions have become increasingly concerned with the impacts of market integration on their well-being, scholars have begun to assess whether popular concerns about a global “race to the bottom” are reflected in cross-country comparisons of union strength. These scholars use foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment in its classic form is defined as a company from one country making a physical investment into building a factory in another country. It is the establishment of an enterprise by a foreigner. Its definition can be extended to include investments made to acquire lasting...

(FDI) and the size of a country’s international trade as a percentage of its GDP to assess a country’s relative degree of market integration. These researchers typically find that globalization

Globalization

Globalization describes an ongoing process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communication and exchange....

does affect union density, but is dependent on other factors, such as unions’ access to the workplace and the centralization of bargaining (Scruggs and Lange, 2002). Sano and Williamson (2008) find that globalization’s impact is conditional upon a country’s labor history. In the United States in particular, which has traditionally had relatively low levels of union density, globalization did not appear to significantly affect union density.

Studies focusing more narrowly on the U.S. labor movement corroborate the comparative findings about the importance of structural factors, but tend to emphasize the effects of changing labor markets due to globalization to a greater extent. For example, in their introduction to their book on effective organizing strategies, Bronfenbrenner (1998) notes that in fact changes in the economy, such as increased global competition, capital flight

Capital flight

Capital flight, in economics, occurs when assets and/or money rapidly flow out of a country, due to an economic event that disturbs investors and causes them to lower their valuation of the assets in that country, or otherwise to lose confidence in its economic strength...

, and the transitions from a manufacturing

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to make things for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

to a service economy

Service economy

Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments. One is the increased importance of the service sector in industrialized economies. Services account for a higher percentage of US GDP than 20 years ago...

and to a greater reliance on transitory and contingent workers, accounts for only a third of the decline in union density. In addition, she claims that the federal government in the 1980’s was largely responsible for giving employers the perception that they could engage in aggressive strategies to repress the formation of unions. Richard Freeman also points to the role of repressive employer strategies in reducing unionization, and highlights the way in which a state ideology of anti-unionism tacitly accepted these strategies (Sexton, 2003). Finally, however, Goldfield (2007) notes that the overall effects of globalization on unionization in the particular case of the United States may be understated in econometric studies on the subject. He notes that the threat of production shifts reduces unions’ bargaining power even if it does not eliminate them, and also claims that most of the effects of globalization on labor’s strength are indirect. In fact, they are most present in change towards a neoliberal political context that has promoted the deregulation

Deregulation

Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operation of market forces.Deregulation is the removal or...

and privatization

Privatization

Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector...

of some industries and accepted increased employer flexibility in labor markets.

Union Strategies in the face of globalization

Regardless of the actual impact of market integration on union density or on workers themselves, organized labor has been engaged in a variety of strategies to limit the agenda of globalization and to promote labor regulations in an international context. The most prominent example of this has been the opposition of labor groups to free trade initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). In both cases, unions expressed strong opposition to the agreements, but to some extent pushed for the incorporation of basic labor standards in the agreement if one were to pass (Bolle, 2005).

However, Mayer (2006) has shown that it was precisely unions’ opposition to NAFTA overall that jeopardized organized labor’s ability to influence the debate on labor standards in a significant way. During Clinton’s presidential campaign, labor unions wanted NAFTA to include a side deal to provide for a kind of international social charter, a set of standards that would be enforceable both in domestic courts and through international institutions. Kantor, then U.S. trade representative, had strong ties to organized labor and believed that he could get unions to come along with the agreement, particularly if they were given a strong voice in the negotiation process. However, when it became clear that Mexico would not stand for this kind of an agreement, some critics from the labor movement would not settle for any viable alternatives. In response, part of the labor movement wanted to declare their open opposition to the agreement, and to push for NAFTA’s rejection in Congress (Mayer, 2006). Ultimately, the ambivalence of labor groups led those within the Administration who supported NAFTA to believe that strengthening NAFTA’s labor side agreement too much would cost more votes among Republicans than it would garner among Democrats, and would make it harder for the United States to elicit support from Mexico (Cameron and Tomlin, 2000).

Nevertheless, Graubart (2008) shows that, despite unions’ open disappointment with the outcome of this labor-side negotiation, labor activists, including the AFL-CIO have used the side agreement’s citizen petition process to highlight ongoing political campaigns and struggles in their home countries. He claims that despite the relative weakness of the legal provisions themselves, the side-agreement has served a legitimizing functioning, giving certain social struggles a new kind of standing.

Furthermore, unions have recently been engaged in a developing field of transnational labor regulation embodied in corporate codes of conduct. However, O’Brien (2002) notes that unions have been only peripherally involved in this process, and remain ambivalent about its potential effects. They worry that these codes could have legitimizing effects on companies that don’t actually live up to good practices, and that companies could use codes to excuse or distract attention from the repression of unions. Braun and Gearhart (2008) note that although unions do participate in the structure of a number of these agreements, their original interest in codes of conduct differed from the interests of human rights and other non-governmental activists. They believed that codes of conduct would be important first steps in creating written principles that a company would be compelled to comply with in later organizing contracts, but did not foresee the establishment of monitoring systems such as the Fair Labor Association. These authors point out that are motivated by power, want to gain insider status politically and are accountable to a constituency that requires them to provide them with direct benefits. In contrast, activists from the non-governmental sector are motivated by ideals, are free of accountability and gain legitimacy from being political outsiders. Therefore, the interests of unions are not likely to align well with the interests of those who draft and monitor corporate codes of conduct.

Finally, unions have made some attempts to organize across borders. In fact, Eder (2002) notes that transnational organizing is not a new phenomenon but has been facilitated by technological change. Nevertheless, he claims that while unions pay lip service to global solidarity, they still act largely in their national self-interest. He argues that unions in the global North are becoming increasingly depoliticized while those in the South grow politically, and that global differentiation of production processes leads to divergent strategies and interests in different regions of the world. These structural differences tend to hinder effective global solidarity. However, in light of the weakness of international labor, Herod (2002) notes that globalization of production need not be met by a globalization of union strategies in order to be contained. In fact, he points out that local strategies, such as the United Auto Workers’ strike against General Motors in 1998, can sometimes effectively interrupt global production processes in ways that they could not before the advent of widespread market integration. Thus, workers need not be connected organizationally to others around the world to effectively influence the behavior of a transnational corporation.

Labor unions in the United States

Labor unions today

Membership

Labor Education Programs

Jurisdiction

Declining Union Density: Disaggregating the Effect of Globalization

Union Strategies in the face of globalization

See also

Surveys