The recent death of Richard Trumka reminds us of the weakened status of organized labor in the US today. His successor faces a daunting challenge in turning around the forty year decline in union membership as well as organized labor’s diminished political clout evident since advocacy of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by the Clinton Administration.
Seventy-two years old, Trumka had been President of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) since 2009. A Pennsylvania native, he had ideal credentials for a labor leader. Both his father and grandfather were coal miners and Trumka himself was first employed as a coal miner in 1968. He worked his way to a bachelor’s degree from Penn State in 1971 and earned a law degree from Villanova in 1974.
Trumka was a staff attorney for the United Mine Workers of America before becoming that union’s president in 1982 at age 33. He had a reputation for aggressive leadership as UMWA chief and was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO in 1995. But by the time Trumka became head of AFL-CIO, several major unions had left the organization, including two of the most powerful, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The percentage of American workers belonging to a union reached its highest level in 1954 at nearly 35 percent. Currently, less than 11 percent of all wage and salary workers in the US are union members according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In terms of total numbers, only 14.3 million workers are organized today, down from a peak of an estimated 21 million in 1979.
Virtually all the decline in union membership has occurred within the private sector. In fact, today public union employees (7.2 million) outnumber private union employees (7.1 million), again according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What is the explanation for this precipitous decline?
It is primarily the result of aggressive efforts by elements in the American business community to restrict the influence and interest of wage and salary employees. Possessing superior financial resources and enjoying greater commonality of interests, employers have the advantage in seeking favorable public policies.
A major player in the assault on workers’ rights is the American Legislative Exchange Council, which advertises itself as a “nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization it is supposed to stay out of politics, but ALEC seeks to influence legislation at every level of government with a major emphasis on states.
At its recent annual convention in July, ALEC’s agenda included draft legislation to prohibit public agencies from engaging in collective bargaining with public employee unions. The proposed legislation would include recognition of public employees’ right to organize, but without the power to negotiate about wages and working conditions. Such an organization would be emasculated.
Corporate lobbyist have been more effective against employees in the private sector, expanding the number of states with “right-to-work” laws from 11 in 1950 to 27 today. They have also found a friend in the US Supreme Court which in 2018 (Janos v. AFSCME) ruled agency fees unconstitutional.
Agency fees are deducted by an employer from the salary or wages of an employee who is not a member of the union that is the exclusive bargaining agent for the employee’s bargaining unit and paid to that union. In other words, they discourage “free riders” who wish to enjoy the benefits of union efforts in their behalf without providing monetary support, thereby undermining the financial stability of the bargaining agent.
What impact has the decline in union influence had on the US economy and the individual American?
Consider the growth in income inequality that parallels the deterioration of organized labor’s strength. According to a study produced 2020 by the Pew Research Center, overall median household income in the US between 1970 and 2018 increased 49 percent from $50,200 to $74,600. The distribution among different income levels paints a different picture: lower income households saw their earnings increase only 43.5 percent, $20,000 to $28,000, and middle income households received 49.1 percent, $58,100 to $81,700, but upper income household enjoyed a 64.5 percent bump, $126,000 to $202,400.
Even more disturbing has been the shift in median family wealth. According to the same Pew Research Center study, lower income families actually saw their wealth decline 8.1 percent between 1983 and 2016, while middle income families managed a bare 13 percent increase over the thirty-three year period. Upper income families experienced an astonishing 146.6 percent climb from $344,100 to $848,400.
Also, indicative of the income inequity that has become so pervasive, the ratio of CEO-to-typical worker compensation has become mind-boggling. Numerous studies report ratios in the range of 300-1 today, up from 20-1 in 1965. Although there have been legislative proposals to reign in such excess, nothing has been passed.
As AFL-CIO President Trumka put most of his efforts into lobbying at the national level and in getting out the vote in major national elections. In recent years meager attention has been given to organizing workers across the fifty states. Granted this may have seemed reasonable in light of the attitude that exists in many state, especially in the South and West. But there is the old adage, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
Trumka put labor’s diminished strength behind Joe Biden in the 2021 presidential contest, and the new president has responded positively. In his first State of the Union address, Biden talked about “a blue-collar blueprint to build America” and urged Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would strengthen workers efforts to organize. But while the US House has passed the PRO Act, there has been no action in the US Senate. Nor has there been any movement to raise the national minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Biden has made significant appointments in his Cabinet and to the National Labor Relations Board that can help America’s workers organize, but Trumka’s successor is going to have to do more at the level of the states if Biden’s legislative agenda is to be successful. Congress may be a “national” institution, but its members are elected in the states.