Reported today on The Seattle Times For the full article visit:
Workers are fired up. But union participation is still on the decline, new statistics show.
In a year when teachers and auto workers mounted lengthy strikes, participation in labor unions in 2019 continued their decades-long decline.
Union membership in the American workforce fell to 10.3% from 10.5% in 2018, according to statistics released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday.
The continued slide shows how energy and momentum around the labor movement is not translating into equivalent growth for unions, whose membership has fallen sharply as a percentage of the U.S. workforce over the last roughly 40 years. In 1983, unions represented about 1 out of 5 workers, now it's 1 in 10 workers.
"They're disappointing numbers for workers and unions," said Professor Joseph McCartin, the executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. "The expansion of the labor market in 2019 didn't produce a proportional expansion in union members. Unions would have hoped to make gains in the course of the past year and they didn't."
The number of total union members - 14.6 million - is relatively unchanged from 2018. But in a robust jobs market, the number of union workers added has not been enough to replace those who retired or left the workforce.
The drop in union representation in the workforce is sobering news for the labor movement, which otherwise saw an eventful year.
Major strikes including grocery workers in the Northeast, teachers in cities like Chicago and Little Rock, Arkansas, and autoworkers around the country attracted public attention and became a crucial stop for 2020 candidates on the campaign trail. The 47,000 General Motors workers who brought the company's car production to a halt during a six-
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