Posts tagged union membership rate
What’s Working: Colorado union membership fell 22% last year. Labor unions say they didn’t see a decline.
February 24, 2026 // Still, 2025 was rough for local labor organizers. It began with President Donald Trump ending collective bargaining rights for workers at many federal agencies over security concerns. In May, Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a union-supported bill to end a state policy requiring workers to vote a second time to start a union. And by the year’s end, petitions to unionize in Colorado fell to 34, down 40% from the prior year when the post-pandemic peak averaged more than one new filing a week.
Union membership dipped in Pa. and NJ amid Trump’s anti-labor push, data suggests
February 24, 2026 // In New Jersey, 14.7% of workers were unionized last year, and in Pennsylvania, it was 10.9%. In both states, that was a decline of around one percentage point from 2024, but BLS noted that state-level data “should be interpreted with caution,” due to the shutdown-related incomplete data.
Opinion: Did Biden save unions? Now we have numbers.
February 23, 2026 // Local government employs more union workers than any other industry, by a lot. State government is the next largest employer. The category education and health services comes next, and even though it’s counted as a private industry, most of those jobs are closely connected to government programs. The federal government has more union members than the entire manufacturing sector.
Freelance Busting: ‘Absolute Stalemate’
February 20, 2026 // The nearly two-thirds of Americans who would prefer to be our own bosses need protection from this encroachment on our freedom to choose self-employment. So do the vast majority of us who are already independent contractors and wish to remain so. It’s beyond frustrating that the help we need may be a long time coming, especially at the federal level. Experts recently gathered to discuss the reality of the situation in Congress during an hourlong Federalist Society panel, where they minced no words about why the challenges in Washington, D.C., persist.
US union membership declining in ‘right-to-work’ states, report reveals
September 8, 2025 // Right-to-work laws allow workers represented by unions to stop paying dues for the services and benefits they receive through union representation, depleting resources from labor unions. Public sector workers in all 50 states have also had their collective bargaining rights stripped through the imposition of right-to-work laws by the US supreme court’s 2018 decision Janus v AFSCME. In 2024, states that protect collective bargaining saw an increase of nearly 10,000 union members, compared with the loss of 200,000 union members in states with right-to-work laws.
Why unions won’t be participating in the U.S. manufacturing boom
May 27, 2025 // "Unionization policy in the United States is based on an adversarial relationship between management and labor," James Hohman, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told Newsweek. "This means that the unions are not looked at as an asset to improve production; they are looked at as an extra cost and extra liability—which is why we see often, but not exclusively, U.S. states with less union concentration are the ones who are adding more employment.
Darn good policy’ George Leef on Right to Work and Rethinking Higher Education
April 20, 2025 // While acknowledging some setbacks — “Michigan being key among them” — Leef remains optimistic. “Union membership keeps shrinking. The union clout, I think, is less than it used to be,” he attests. Leef attributes this to a growing awareness among workers that, “unions don’t always represent the people they claim to; they’re oftentimes lining their own pockets.” Leef argues that labor relations were healthier before federal interference. “In our early history, people could sign up if they wanted to, or they were free to not sign up… Then the federal government stepped in and insisted that unions had some special right to represent workers,” he says.
Amazon workers reject union in vote at North Carolina warehouse
February 19, 2025 // Amazon workers at a facility near Raleigh, North Carolina, overwhelmingly voted against unionizing on Saturday. Of the 3,276 ballots cast, there were 2,447 votes opposing the union and 829 in favor, according to the National Labor Relations Board. There were 77 challenged ballots, a gap that’s too narrow to change the outcome of the election. The results still need to be certified by the NLRB.
Republicans Should Support Workers — Not the Failed Union Model
February 6, 2025 // Senator Hawley’s proposal would prevent workers from hearing both sides before a unionization election, which they would need to make an informed decision. Employers would be prohibited from holding meetings with workers. Unions would also be able to force ambush elections, depriving workers of time to do their own research and make up their minds. And, like the PRO Act, the proposal would even give unelected federal bureaucrats the power to force union contracts on workers, employers, and even unions.
REPORT: How government unions work against interests of private-sector unions, taxpayers
January 22, 2025 // First, there is no archetypal profit motive in the government sector. Congress passed laws promoting collective bargaining in the private sector to prevent the exploitation of workers by employers who were seeking to increase their profits through long work hours and poor working conditions.