Posts tagged union membership
Commentary: Did Labor Unions Bring Us the Weekend?
September 24, 2024 // I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the shortening of the American workweek. Still, I’m not the only one who has noticed this. I surveyed economic historians and asked whether they agreed with the proposition that “the reduction in the length of the workweek in American manufacturing before the Great Depression was primarily due to the efforts of labor unions.” Only 5 percent agreed, and an additional 25 percent agreed but with conditions, while the vast majority — over 70 percent — disagreed. Another question asked whether the reduction in the workweek was “primarily due to economic growth and the increased wages it brought.” The profession answered with a resounding “yes,” with less than 20 percent disagreeing.
The Union Members Who Never Voted for Their Union
September 10, 2024 // Reform federal labor law to require a secret-ballot election for unionization, as the Employee Rights Act would do. A 2022 survey showed that 70 percent of Americans — and 76 percent of union households — support this concept. At present, unions can succeed without support from a majority of its workforce when only a tiny portion of eligible employees vote in the election. For example, the NLRB is considering certifying an election in California in which just three employees out of 24 voted to unionize. A fourth voted against the union, and the rest did not vote. Federal labor law should require a quorum — such as two-thirds of all eligible voters — in order for an election result to be upheld. Such a requirement is popular: Eighty-four percent of Americans support this idea.
How the Mafia Infiltrated American Labor Unions
August 12, 2024 // While law enforcement agencies continue to monitor Mafia infiltration of labor unions, labor racketeering has become less prevalent than it was decades ago. In part, that’s because union membership plummeted after the McClellan Committee exposed the extent of labor racketeering. At its zenith in the mid-1950s, union membership comprised one-third of the labor force, but now union members only represent approximately 10 percent of American workers.
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Practical Case
August 11, 2024 // The effect of sectoral bargaining on union corruption would be unclear. Scholars of union corruption have blamed enterprise bargaining combined with union monopoly representation for America’s unusually high levels of labor racketeering. There is truth to this, but it is also not the case that American unions involved in industries with more-sectoral-style approaches are “cleaner.” The New York City garment industry, which was exempted from various Taft-Hartley regulations on union conduct, was believed by the federal government to have been Mob influenced as recently as the 1990s. More recently, the United Auto Workers, which conducts a sort of pseudo-sectoral bargaining with the unionized Detroit Three automakers by “patterning” its contracts, was forced into a regime change after the largest union corruption scandal of the 21st century. Putting more power in the hands of America’s long-standing class of union officials, who are known for having their hands in the cookie jar, certainly is not an obvious approach to reducing or surveilling corruption in organized labor.
WMKT Special Edition Interviews Vinnie Vernuccio: RNC Labor Speech
July 30, 2024 // Vinnie Vernuccio, President and Co-founder of the Institute for the American Worker joins the show to discuss the fallout from Teamsters Union President Sean O'Brien's speech at the RNC convention.
Op-Ed: Union membership is now political. So can the government still require people to associate with a union?
July 10, 2024 // Since then, employees have argued that exclusive union representation does violate the First Amendment. Exclusivity saddles them with the “services” of nakedly political bargaining agents. Lower courts have turned those arguments aside mostly because of an older case, Minnesota Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, which suggested that exclusive representation was okay in the public sector. Knight seemed to say that when the government bargains about working conditions, it can choose its own bargaining partner. And if it chooses one exclusive union to bargain with, that choice burdens no one’s associational rights. But whether or not that’s what Knight meant, the decision has no bearing on private-sector bargaining. In the private sector, the government does not choose its own bargaining partner; it imposes one on private parties. And some of those parties object to their unions’ political views—views that are increasingly central to unionization itself. So private-sector bargaining raises a different question: can the government force private citizens to associate with a union when that union’s core purpose is increasingly political? (Elsewhere, I have argued at greater length that it cannot.)
OPINION: L.A. Teacher’s Fight With Union Appealed To Supreme Court
April 23, 2024 // Laird refused to dismiss his lawsuit, and with good reason. Because his case is about more than the return of his money. In fact, Laird is donating the entire amount he received from UTLA to a nonprofit group that helps disadvantaged students in the Los Angeles area. When judges at both the lower court level and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the union, the Freedom Foundation filed a request with the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in. Glenn Laird’s case is about a judicial acknowledgment and vindication of his First Amendment rights by a federal judge. As long as unions can cut checks using their members’ dues dollars to make lawsuits disappear, judges will never have the opportunity to rule on the actual constitutional issues, rendering the First Amendment and Janus decision meaningless. “Hopefully the Supreme Court will find my case worthy of making a ruling,” concluded Laird. “Janus set the stage, but now we need to build on that precedent so unions and lower court judges don’t continue to ignore the Supremes.”
Analysis: UAW membership drops significantly in Michigan
April 10, 2024 // The UAW is down to 370,239 active, dues-paying members, a drop of approximately13,000 from last year. The union had more than 700,000 active members in 2002 before bottoming out at around 355,191 in 2010. This hasn’t hurt the union’s revenue, however. It took in $485 million last year, the most ever. Membership numbers are even worse for the assorted UAW branches in Michigan. They lost about 6,500 members during the strike year and are now down to 127,458. That’s a 5% drop.
Commentary Big Labor’s Decline and Left Turn: Membership Decline
March 23, 2024 //
Union membership in Illinois dropped by 27,000 workers in 2023
February 16, 2024 // Criticizing a new bill filed in the Illinois legislature that would require high schools to observe “Workplace Readiness Week,” Mailee Smith, the Illinois Policy Institute’s senior director of Labor Policy and staff attorney, said unions, particularly government unions, will do whatever they can to ensure they maintain that foothold over power. “With this bill, it is about getting the kids … early on to give them this information about unionization and this becomes part of their thought process and part of their worldview without any sort of opposite viewpoint being taught to them,” Smith said.