CFO DIVE: Unions lose clout even amid high-profile organizing gains
January 20, 2023
By Jim Tyson
Dive Brief:
The share of U.S. workers with union membership fell to a record low last year even as labor organizers scored high-profile wins at Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon.com and other companies.
Among wage and salary workers, 10.1% were members of unions last year compared with 10.3% in 2021 and 20.1% in 1983, the Labor Department said. Unions lost ground proportionally in 2022 as the total number of workers grew by 5.3 million, or 3.9%.
“On average, industries and occupations with low rates of unionization are growing faster than ones with high rates of unionization,” according to Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute. Also, employees at new businesses may be less likely to be unionized than older ones.
Dive Insight:
Unions have failed to stem both a long-term decline in proportional membership and an erosion in real wages. Indeed, in recent years “the wages of non-union workers have been rising much faster than for union workers,” Levanon said, citing Labor Department data….
