Union Density Blues: Trump Guts the National Labor Relations Board, Fires Federal Workers, and Attacks Collective Bargaining as National Union Density Hits Single Digits

How Will Labor Respond?

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) release of the latest union density numbers last week, noting in the title of that piece that “16 million Workers Were Unionized in 2024: Millions More Want to Join Unions but Couldn’t.” That sounds like a good problem to have until you dive into the details and realize the bottom line: union density is now at a recent historic low despite what the public thinks about unions or would prefer in their own workplace.

As EPI observes:

Interest in union organizing is surging in the United States. Since 2021, petitions for union elections at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have more than doubled. And public support for unions is near 60-year highs—at 70%. This growing momentum around union organizing—aided by the Biden administration’s support for worker organizing and appointment of strong worker advocates in critical agencies like NLRB—signals a powerful push by workers to improve wages, working conditions, and workplace rights. But despite this groundswell of support, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveal a puzzling trend: Unionization rates continue to decline.

Research shows that 60 million workers would join a union if they could. The disconnect between the growing interest in unionization and declining unionization rates can be explained by the fact that there are powerful forces blocking the will of workers: aggressive opposition from employers combined with labor law that is so weak that it doesn’t truly protect workers’ right to organize. Decades of attacks on unions both on the federal and state levels have made it hard for workers to form and maintain unions. Further, weaknesses in federal labor law have made it possible for employers to oppose unions, contributing to this decline.

EPI points out that years of attacks on the union movement at the federal, state, and municipal levels combined with a hostile legal landscape make it very difficult for unions to organize even if the desire to do so is there. They point to a series of reforms needed at the state and federal level to aid in union organizing, but under Trump the hope that any help is coming from the GOP regime or the National Labor Relations Board (where Trump just fired a pro-union board member and the chief counsel who was working to expand rights on the job) is ill-founded. As Harold Meyerson noted inThe American Prospect:

[Trump] fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. Wilcox was fired illegally, despite Congress having ratified her appointment to a term that extends to 2028, in keeping with Trump’s campaign to negate congressionally enacted laws and appointments. Her firing—which Wilcox is contesting in court—also leaves the five-member Board with just two members, even as the Supreme Court has ruled that the Board needs at least three members to issue any rulings, including on illegal firings, union election certification challenges, citations of unfair labor practices, or anything else.

The simultaneous firing of Abruzzo, who’s been the most pro-worker federal official since New York Sen. Robert Wagner (who authored both the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act in 1935), means that the Board not only can’t rule on any employment issues but also that its local attorneys who investigate employee and employer complaints no longer have a senior counsel who sets their priorities and policy. In Wilcox’s and Abruzzo’s stead, we’re left with a labor law of the jungle, which enables employers to run as roughshod over their workers as their little pocketbooks desire.

Some reforms may still be possible in blue states where previously existing “right to work” laws could be upended and collective bargaining expanded and further protected, but, even there, the hostile national landscape makes things much more difficult. This was made abundantly clear in Trump’s Executive Order limiting collective bargaining for federal employees.

Hence, we are faced with private sector unionization rates at 5.9% with 32% density in the public sector, which is now vulnerable on a variety of fronts. In California, even with more supportive elected officials, the union rate is 17% statewide, showing a slight decline from the last report from the BLS.

Where does this put the American labor movement?

In Hamilton Nolan’s Substack How Things Work, he has a darker take on the same set of numbers as his title flatly argues that it was “Confirmed: Unions Squandered the Biden Years: Welcome to Single Digit Union Density.” He goes on to ask “Has achieving electoral political power translated into the growth of union power? Have the dollars spent on politics rather than on union organizing paid off?” His answer is blunt:

Today, we can definitively say the answer is “no.” That’s because, this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual measurement of union membership in America, the best statistical measure of the total strength and size of unions. In 2024, union density in America fell to 9.9% of the work force. In 1983, union density was 20.1%, meaning that organized labor is now less than half as powerful as it was during the Reagan presidency. This is the first time in generations that less than ten percent of workers have been union members. In 2020, union density was 10.8%. That means that over the course of the most pro-union presidency in my lifetime, not only did union density not rise—it declined into single digits.

We are losing. Despite having our bestest most favorite friend in the White House, we are losing. If this does not wake the labor movement up, what will?

Nolan’s answer is that money needs to be redirected from politics to organizing, which should be the top priority of every union in America. While it is sadly debatable whether a huge reinvestment in organizing could dramatically turn things around for American unions, it is undeniable that if the labor movement does not change from the current status quo, it risks rapidly becoming irrelevant just when it is most needed as a tool to fight the massive redistribution of wealth upward that we have seen over the last several decades.

Indeed, we are about to witness much more pillaging of the commons very soon as the billionaires and corporate overlords have unmasked themselves and are quite happy to wait like pigs at the trough for another feast at our expense in the form of massive tax cuts and deregulation that will remove any obstacle that remains for them to do whatever they want whenever they want to do it.

Over at Left Business Observer, Doug Henwood breaks down the union density numbers and ends his overview with this:

I usually end these density writeups with a homily. The union premium may be declining, but any premium >0% will inspire bosses to hate unions and want to destroy them—and not just for the higher pay. Unions are a constraint on bosses’ behavior; they can force them to be less racist, less abusive, and less able to fire. But clearly they’ve lost a lot of their bite over time.

And now my standard conclusion:

There are a lot of things wrong with American unions. Most organize poorly, if at all. Politically they function mainly as ATMs and free labor pools for the Democratic party without getting much in return. But there’s no way to end the 40-year war on the US working class without getting union membership up….

It’s still true, though I’ve got to up that count to 45 years or more.

So, while pessimism may be warranted, we cannot afford to stop trying to move the boulder up the hill. It is clear, as Nolan argues, that unions need to organize like their lives depend on it, because they do. But it is less true that having union allies in government makes no difference, particularly if you are a public sector worker whose job depends on the decisions made by elected officials at all levels and how tax revenue is raised and distributed or cut and withheld. As I have written here in previous weeks, some union leaders share Nolan’s urgency and understand that we need to do all we can to fight an ascendent American oligarchy by organizing more union members internally, externally, and in concert with community allies.

As someone who has been a union member and elected representative for most of my career, I can attest to the value of increasing density and solidarity in the union movement, but my sense is that with labor representing only one in ten workers overall and far less in some sectors, genuine community-labor alliances in the service of building power for union and non-union workers is the answer for how to fight back at present.

Organize everyone you can into a union and reach out a helping hand to those for whom that door is temporarily shut.

This larger sense of solidarity will only result in more favorable conditions for unions and open the door for organizing the unorganized rather than simply fighting for the already organized. Just as we need to look at the undocumented worker, the unhoused person, and all the vulnerable folks in the crosshairs at this moment and think, “That could be me, or my family or my neighbor,” we should realize that compassion is the heart of a bridge-building solidarity. In these dark times, we must come to see that the concern of one is really the concern of all.

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