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Importance of Labor Unions

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Published: Mar 20, 2024

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Historical context, advocating for workers' rights, improving working conditions, political advocacy.

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Labor Unions’ Scope and Importance Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction, the role of unions in the workplace today, the principal value of unions and challenges presented to organizations, the challenges faced by human resources in foreign countries.

Labor unions have been viewed as important institutions that focus on protecting the interests of wage earners, specifically by improving their working conditions. In the 1950s, the United States’ industrial sector witnessed a considerable rise of unions that represented at least 30% of workers (Wunnava, 2016). Nonetheless, since the 1970s up to date, unions have declined significantly, thereby raising questions regarding their importance in contemporary industrial settings. Currently, in the U.S., unions take only a meager 10% of this country’s workforce. Such a decline may indicate that the role of unions in the modern workplace environment is weakening. Furthermore, workers employed in foreign countries experience challenges while trying to establish meaningful relationships with unions and employers. In this respect, it is crucial to critically examine the weakening scope and importance of unions in the present-day workplace.

Contemporary trade unions play a huge role in increasing the wages of unionized employees and improving their standards of working. According to Wunnava (2016), trade unions seek to enhance the welfare of employees by encouraging employers to offer fair compensation. In executing this role, unions usually influence organizations in different industries to set a standard pay for employees based on their academic credentials. As such, in most scenarios, as Wunnave (2016) reveals, unionized workers without degrees receive 5% more pay compared to their counterparts working in less federated industries. However, Jerch, Kahn, and Li (2017) have a different opinion whereby they regard this rise in the number of graduates with college degrees as contributing to a counterproductive role played by unions in contemporary industrial settings.

Furthermore, labor unions lessen the income inequality gap that exists in the modern-day business environment. According to Wunnava (2016), unions undertake this function by advocating for a reasonable increase in the earnings of low and middle-wage workers. In executing this role, alliances disregard the essence of raising white-collar workers’ wages. Nevertheless, this role has become counterproductive in the modern workplace environment since the continued reduction of the American income inequality over the past two decades compromises the need for investing hugely in some educational courses (Wunnava, 2016). This situation is accountable for the decline of unions in the U.S today.

Unions also play the role of influencing employers to cater to the healthcare needs of workers. As Culpepper and Regan (2014) indicate, unionized employees, pay 18% less for their healthcare bills compared to nonunionized personnel. As such, by helping workers to effectively improve their healthcare status, alliances demonstrate their vital role in the modern workplace environment. The goal of ensuring that workers’ medical demands are addressed efficiently in the U.S. could not be realized fully without the input of labor unions. As a result, despite the declining significance of workers’ alliances, it is crucial to appreciate this milestone made, thanks to their continued existence in America.

Moreover, trade unions ensure that unionized workers get more pensions as part of retirement benefits. As such, they foster the efficiency of safety nets such as the Medicaid program in the U.S. Nonetheless, Jerch et al. (2017) reveal that employers in the contemporary industries uphold the idea of facilitating the implementation of pension programs, hence diminishing the input of trade unions in achieving this duplicate goal.

Unions embrace the primary value of enhancing the effective resolution of conflicts between employees and employers. As such, the role of conflict management requires these bodies to act as bargaining representatives in negotiations that involve employers and workers. According to Wunnava (2016), unions value the essence of safeguarding the interest of employees as a way of promoting fairness in the workplace environment. Nonetheless, Culpepper and Regan (2014) point out that the U.S. government has been effective in implementing labor laws over the past few decades, hence differing with Wunnava’s (2016) claim that these bodies are valuable in contemporary times. In addition, present-day organizations have established efficient conflict resolution measures. As a result, the intervention of unions in the U.S. is less important today compared to the situation in the 1950s.

Furthermore, the effective application of labor laws has been viewed as a challenge to organizations. In particular, they have been forced to refrain from exposing workers to unsafe working environments. Proper management of human resources is identified as an important factor that facilitates the success of an organization (Wunnava, 2016). Therefore, since virtually all industries embrace the concept of employee satisfaction, organizations have improved human resources’ working conditions, including their compensation packages. Such benefits reduce instances of conflicts that may require the intervention of unions.

Workers in foreign countries face an array of challenges in their course of establishing relationships with overseas management bodies and unions. For instance, according to Jerch et al. (2017), contrary to what they experience in domestic settings, the lack of awareness regarding laws that protect foreign workers from exploitation is one of the leading factors, which contribute to the witnessed difficulty of establishing meaningful interactions with unions and administrative agencies. In most cases, native workers have a better understanding of policies that stipulate their connections with management teams and trade unions. This situation is usually different for foreign workers who lack vital information regarding foreign workplace environments.

Employees in overseas countries are not aware of the level of protection offered by unions. As Jerch et al. (2017) assert, this situation makes it difficult for workers’ representatives to access foreign employees. Conversely, in domestic settings, it is usually trouble-free for workers to benefit from the representation of unions in negotiations (Jerch et al., 2017). In this respect, there is the need for unions and management to offer the appropriate information regarding unionization to natives and foreign workers. This approach should encourage overseas personnel to form or secure membership with independent unions, hence boosting the efficiency of relationships between workers and employers.

Moreover, the level of income offered to overseas staff in particular industries is also a factor that undermines their relationships with administrative bodies and trade alliances. As Jerch et al. (2017) reveal, low earnings offered to foreign workers significantly affect their financial well-being, thereby denoting the failure of unions to secure their interests in overseas workplaces. As such, such poor compensation packages tarnish not only the relationship of foreign workers with employers but also their prevailing association with unions since they fail to protect them from exploitation.

Trade unions play a vital role in safeguarding the interest of workers. Nonetheless, the decline of trade unions suggests that their scope and importance in the contemporary workplace environment are diminishing. This deteriorating principal value of unions is an indication that governments and organizations have taken up the role of facilitating the effective implementation of labor policies. However, unlike the situation in domestic countries, foreign workers experience poor relationships with management bodies and unions due to the lack of awareness regarding labor laws and income inequalities. Therefore, it is crucial to support the operations of trade unions in modern-day industrial settings.

Culpepper, P. D., & Regan, A. (2014). Why don’t governments need trade unions anymore? The death of social pacts in Ireland and Italy. Socio-Economic Review , 12 (4), 723-745.

Jerch, R., Kahn, M. E., & Li, S. (2017). The efficiency of local government: The role of privatization and public sector unions. Journal of Public Economics , 154 , 95-121.

Wunnava, P. V. (2016). The changing role of unions: New forms of representation . Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

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Union organizer Jason Anthony addresses the press on April 1 after Amazon workers in Staten Island voted to unionize, marking the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history.

AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

Will the message sent by Amazon workers turn into a movement?

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Union vote is a significant victory, economist says, but serious challenges remain for U.S. labor activists

Dissatisfaction with pay and benefits, job security, and working conditions has led more U.S. workers to decide the best way to get what they want is through collective bargaining. Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to form the Amazon Labor Union last week, a first for the mega-retailer. Labor activists have expressed hope that the unexpected victory might jumpstart more unionizing at Amazon and at other companies across the U.S.

The Gazette spoke with the Harvard labor economist Lawrence Katz about thousands of employees at Amazon, Condé Nast, The New York Times, and Starbucks unionizing in the last few weeks and whether it could signal a new era of union participation after decades of decline. The interview was edited for clarity and length.

Lawrence Katz

GAZETTE:   Many have called the Amazon Labor Union’s victory “historic.” So far, however, Amazon has not agreed to recognize the union. How significant is this win?

KATZ: I think it is quite significant. Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the U.S. after Walmart, one of the most valuable companies in the world, one of the most universal and visible, and one that has been adamantly trying to prevent unionization since its inception. And now a grassroots organization has just won a strongly contested union representation election against Amazon. Does this lead to a broader movement of independent unions or increased success for existing unions in organizing at Amazon and other major employers, or is it an outlier? That’s an open question. Many unions have won representation elections in recent decades, and then had a tough time getting a contract with U.S. employers. But the victory in Staten Island could send a powerful message to a lot of workers of the ability of a grassroots organizing campaign even when facing strong employer opposition.

GAZETTE: What are some of these hurdles that unions face in getting a first contract?

KATZ:   There are multiple legal strategies that U.S. employers have used to challenge election results, and Amazon could follow such an approach to argue there were problems with the holding of the election. And then, there’s an employer just holding out on making any concessions in bargaining. The fraction of unions who win elections and then fail to get a first contract is substantial in the U.S. The hope of employers is if you hold out long enough, the union activists leave, and things settle down. In maybe 25 to 30 percent of the cases where unions win elections, they never get a first contract. The amount of publicity and scrutiny in this case may put more pressure on the employer to reach an agreement. Until a union has a first contract, they are not established with permanent stature. Can you collect dues from members through payroll deductions and have an ongoing organization to support the union? That’s what’s typically known as a union shop or agency agreement, which is what’s not allowed in “right to work” states but would be in New York, if the Amazon Labor Union can get a contract.

GAZETTE: Workers at other major companies, including Condé Nast, The New York Times, and Starbucks, have moved to unionize in recent weeks. Are we seeing the start of a labor resurgence?

KATZ: If you look at the overall number of elections, it’s not particularly high over the last few years. Obviously, the pandemic slowed it down in 2020 and 2021. This last month has shown a spike in elections. The busiest month in like eight or nine years in union elections was March of this year. So there is a bit of a surge. But if you look at the data on union membership from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s not noticeable yet, at least through 2021. The long-run trends are of a declining share of U.S. workers unionized.

Union successes are certainly showing up in places we haven’t seen over the past five years or so. And if you look at other indicators of labor activism, 2018 and 2019 saw more workers on strike than we’ve seen in decades. Elections are up and worker activism activity was up. Clearly, tight labor markets play an important role. Workers, if they believe there are a lot of other jobs out there, are more willing to take a risk on forming a union knowing that it doesn’t mean unemployment if their employer retaliates. When labor markets have been very tight, we tend to see more worker activism. A big question is whether this wave of activism will survive the next recession.

GAZETTE: In 2021, public approval for unions hit 68 percent, its highest level in 57 years. Yet union participation continues to decline. What accounts for this mismatch between support and participation?

KATZ:  If you do surveys and ask nonunion workers whether they would be in favor of having a union, in the latest ones, a majority say they would. Yet, union election activity is low: About 10 percent of all American workers are members of unions. That’s because we have a system in which you typically need to win a highly contested election to have a chance of union representation, for the most part. It’s very rare for employers to accept workers unionizing without a fight. Over the years, a whole industry has developed of union avoidance and of consultants who specialize in helping employers form strategies to prevent unionization and defeat unions in National Labor Relations Board elections. We can see the reports of the tremendous resources that Amazon put into keeping out unions. I think the general sense is the delays that employers are able to do, the fact that they can (at least implicitly) intimidate workers trying to organize and even fire such workers, has hindered U.S. employees in exercising their right to unionize under the National Labor Relations Act. And the penalties for such unfair and illegal labor practices are often modest and can sometimes be imposed only many years later (e.g., some back pay may be owed once the union drive has been defeated). Thus, U.S. employers have learned very much over the past decades about how to defeat unionization efforts, even when it appears most of the workers want to be represented by union and desire a greater voice in the workplace.

GAZETTE:  In the coming months, what indicators will you look for to see whether unions are making a meaningful comeback?

KATZ: We’re going to see whether there is a new wave of union representation elections and more union successes in elections and at getting contracts negotiated and signed, whether at more Starbucks or Amazon locations or more broadly. The degree of visible worker activism, NLRB representation election activity, and union election victories will be important indicators. But the other important thing is whether the unions at newly organized workplaces are successful at quickly getting contracts or whether they get dragged into months and months of negotiations and legal disputes even after winning elections so that the air comes out of the movement.

Two other crucial issues will play an important role. The first is whether the current tight labor market persists or whether attempts to deal with high inflation or international shocks will send the U.S. economy into another recession.

The other is whether public opinion is going to turn less favorable to unions and worker activism, as we have seen in the past. In the past, attempts to blame high inflation, strikes, and slow productivity growth at least partially on unions and worker activism, in the U.S. with Ronald Reagan or in Britain with Margaret Thatcher, have been part of the political playbook. Has there been a real, lasting change in public opinion and worker attitudes about the need for a stronger worker voice with the pandemic, or is this a tight labor market situation that will disappear as the labor market weakens? These are going to be key things to look at going forward.

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There are sharp partisan divisions in views of labor unions. Overall, 55% of Americans say labor unions positively affect the country, while 41% say they have a negative impact. These views are little changed in recent years.

By roughly three-to-one (75% positive to 23% negative), Democrats have a positive view of labor unions. Republicans are about half as likely as Democrats to view unions positively; 35% of Republicans say unions are having a positive impact, compared with 61% who view unions negatively.

Within each party, there are ideological differences in evaluations of labor unions. Liberal Democrats are 20 percentage points more likely than moderate and conservative Democrats to say unions are having a positive effect (86% vs. 66%). And moderate and liberal Republicans are 26 points more likely than conservative Republicans to say this (52% vs. 26%).

Union members

Union members (74%) are far more likely than those who do not belong to a union (53%) to view labor unions positively.

Last year, a majority of Americans (58%) said the long-term decline in union membership was a bad thing for the country . Union membership has fallen by roughly half over the last four decades. Currently, about one-in-ten adults (11%) report being members of a union.

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• v.106(6); Jun 2016

The Role of Labor Unions in Creating Working Conditions That Promote Public Health

All authors contributed to the conceptual development of the study. C. A. Paras and H. Greenwich coordinated data collection. All authors collaborated on study design. J. Hagedorn was the primary author of data analysis and interpretation and drafted the article with significant support from A. Hagopian and H. Greenwich. All authors revised content and approved the final version to be published.

We sought to portray how collective bargaining contracts promote public health, beyond their known effect on individual, family, and community well-being. In November 2014, we created an abstraction tool to identify health-related elements in 16 union contracts from industries in the Pacific Northwest. After enumerating the contract-protected benefits and working conditions, we interviewed union organizers and members to learn how these promoted health. Labor union contracts create higher wage and benefit standards, working hours limits, workplace hazards protections, and other factors. Unions also promote well-being by encouraging democratic participation and a sense of community among workers. Labor union contracts are largely underutilized, but a potentially fertile ground for public health innovation. Public health practitioners and labor unions would benefit by partnering to create sophisticated contracts to address social determinants of health.

Labor unions improve conditions for workers in ways that promote individual, family, and community well-being, yet the relationship between public health and organized labor is not fully developed. 1 Despite historic and current efforts by labor unions to improve conditions for workers, public health institutions have rarely sought out labor as a partner. 2,3

In 2014, American labor union density was at a 99-year low. 4 Low union density has left workers vulnerable to reduced health and safety standards, and has fed the decline in public perception of the value of unions. 5,6 Unions have helped to codify economic equity in the workplace, and the decline of their power is associated with the greatest level of economic inequity in our nation’s history. 5,7–9 The erosion of union density has undermined the role of organized labor as a societal power equalizer. 8

Income is a primary social determinant of health, associated with the living environment and overall well-being of individuals or families. 10–16 Income is higher in union jobs than in nonunion jobs, especially for lower-skilled workers. 5,16–18 Retirement or pension plans create the financial stability to promote health into old age. 19 Union employees are more likely to have a retirement or pension plan and are more likely to participate in a retirement plan sponsored by their employer than employees who are not members of a union. 20,21

Researchers have established a correlation between unionized work and a higher percentage of pay coming in the form of highly valued benefits. 22,23 Unions have historically been involved in creating healthy and safe workplaces, advocating regulations that are monitored and enforced by public health entities such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 3,24

Autonomy and control over one’s life are associated with positive health outcomes, 25–28 and social support in the work environment enhances psychological and physical health. 29,30 Conversely, perceived job insecurity is associated with risk factors for poor health outcomes, contributing to racial and socioeconomic health disparities. 31–35 Unions help members gain control over their scheduling 36,37 and job security, 38 and union membership is associated with increased democratic participation. 39

The American Public Health Association is on record supporting the role of labor unions in promoting healthy working conditions, health and safety programs, health insurance, and democratic participation. 40–42 The decline of union density may undermine public health in the United States, making this a critical time for public health to actively support labor unions.

Previous researchers published in AJPH have highlighted the links between unions, working conditions, and public health, but called for more research to establish the precise mechanism of the relationships. Malinowski et al. proposed the social–ecological model as theoretical framework for connecting public health and labor organizing. 43 Both labor unions and public health organizations intervene in the conditions that make people healthy through individual life choices, and social and community networks, as well as general socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions. Malinowski et al. illustrates the overlapping interests of labor unions and public health and how their lack of coordination has created barriers for both institutions.

One mechanism unions use to promote public health is the union contract. These are legally binding, durable over a designated time, and specific. They are durable because they cannot be unilaterally changed, and contracts that follow often build on the progress of previous negotiations. Even after a contract expires, federal labor law provides a process and momentum for the negotiation of a new one.

We hypothesized that union contracts promote the health status of workers. If true, contracts have untapped potential for public health professionals working to improve the health of individuals and communities.

We designed this cross-sectional, mixed-methods study to identify specific mechanisms that link labor union representation and public health outcomes. Our primary unit of analysis was the negotiated contract between management and labor for a variety of unions in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. We supplemented a textual analysis of the contracts with interviews of union organizers and union members.

In the summer of 2014, we established a partnership between a University of Washington master of public health graduate student (J. H.) and Puget Sound Sage, a nonprofit organization that promotes alignment among labor, environmental, and community interests to “grow communities where all families thrive.” We identified 6 union locals in the region that represented hotel workers, truck drivers, home-care workers, construction workers, child-care workers, office workers, and grocery store workers. Sage held preexisting relationships with these unions, either through representation on Sage’s board or some other form of collaboration, which greatly facilitated our data requests. For each union, we obtained 1 or more labor contracts, for a total of 16 contracts ( Table 1 ).

TABLE 1—

Union Contracts Dated 2010 to 2014 Analyzed for Mechanisms That Advance Health of Employees and Their Families: Pacific Northwest, United States

Note. SEIU = Service Employees International Union; UFCW = United Food and Commercial Workers; UNITE HERE = Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. Data for this article came from the 16 union contracts analyzed for their health-related factors, obtained from 5 Puget Sound labor unions in 2014.

Through a comprehensive literature review of the work-related determinants of health, we identified health-related factors that theoretically might be addressed in a labor contract. We then created a spreadsheet abstracting specific language from each contract by each of the theoretical constructs, and, through an iterative process, settled on 12 health factors. For example, we created a cell for “fair and predictable pay increases,” into which the following Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 775 contract language was placed:

Employees who complete advanced training beyond the training required to receive a valid Home Care Aide certification (as set forth in the Training Partnership curriculum) shall be paid an additional twenty-five cents ($0.25) per hour differential to his/her regular hourly wage rate.

After creating the 12 large categories, we further analyzed the contract language in our spreadsheet to generate 34 subcategories ( Table 2 ). We suggest that these 34 factors, taken together, comprise the specific mechanisms by which labor contract language supports public health. We determined whether the indicators were present in each contract (Table A, available as a supplement to the online version of this article at http://www.ajph.org ) and Table 2 reports what proportion of contracts contained language on each of the 34 factors. When “all” contracts have an indicator, this means each of the 16 contracts contains health-protecting language on the topic. “Almost all” refers to 14 or 15 contracts, “most” means 7 to 13 contracts, and “some” refers to 5 or 6 contracts.

TABLE 2—

Factors That Advance Health of Employees Theorized to be Found in Union Contracts, and Their Presence in 16 Union Contracts Dated 2010 to 2014: Pacific Northwest, United States

Note. All = 16 contracts; almost all = 14 or 15 contracts; most = 7 to 13 contracts; some = 5 or 6 contracts. Data for this article came from the 16 union contracts analyzed for their health-related factors, obtained from 5 Puget Sound labor unions in 2014.

To supplement our analysis, we interviewed 1 member from each of the 6 unions covered by a contract in our analysis, as well as 7 union organizers representing those members ( Table 3 ). In 1-hour interviews with union organizers, we explored how contract language is aligned with public health outcomes through questions about their job and the role of the union. We asked workers about the dangers in their job and if or how the union helps to protect them, we asked about safety and health problems and the union’s role in addressing those, and we asked about conflict in the workplace and whether the union helps to resolve issues. We also asked workers to compare any workplaces they had experienced without a union to their current workplace.

TABLE 3—

Interviews Conducted With Union Members and Organizers: Pacific Northwest, United States, 2015

Note. SEIU = Service Employees International Union; UFCW = United Food and Commercial Workers; UNITE HERE = Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. Interviews conducted between January and April 2015 with Puget Sound–area labor union staff and industry employees to supplement our understanding of the role of labor union contracts in protecting employee health.

Each union assisted in identifying a covered member for us to interview. Usually, an e-mail was sent to members the organizer thought may be interested in the study. These members were compensated $50 for their 1-hour interviews, with funds provided by Sage. In interviews with members, we asked about the most dangerous or hazardous aspects of their jobs and how the union helps to mitigate those risks, as well as other benefits of being a union member.

There is consistency among contracts negotiated by same union (Table A). Contracts with public sector entities (such as 925.2, Headstart Program; 775.3, State of Washington; and 242.3, Seattle School District) have fewer provisions that contribute to health in their contracts.

Compensation

We created compensation indicators illustrating how the wages of employees are augmented when employers are prohibited from externalizing their costs by having employees pay for work-related travel, training, and materials.

All contracts include minimum wages by employee classifications, including overtime. Higher income and overtime wage gains are built over time. Income is augmented when employers are directed to cover specific work-related expenses. Most contracts compensate employees for the cost of traveling between work sites and the cost (or partial costs) of trainings. Some contracts also provide money for materials, such as United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) contract 21.2, which states, “The Employer shall bear the expense of furnishing and laundering aprons, shop coats, and smocks, for all employees under this Agreement.” Other contracts ensure employers will not call in more employees than needed and then send them home; they do this by creating a “show-up pay” provision. Laborers’ contract 242.1 describes this as

Employees reporting for work and not put to work shall receive two hours pay at the regular straight time rate, unless inclement weather conditions prohibits work, or notified not to report at the end of the previous shift or two hours prior to the start of a shift.

One child-care worker explained how union advocacy has increased the supplement provided by the state for the extra challenges posed by caring for low-income children, saying “For family childcare workers, who are often very underpaid for the amount of hours that they work, we have seen over the last 8 years, a 22% increase in our subsidized childcare. That is big!” Another worker from Teamsters Local 117 said, “I know there are guys doing the same job [in nonunion warehouses] making $10 less an hour.”

Predictable and fair increases.

All contracts provide wage increases on the basis of qualifications, duties, and duration of time at the company. Workers can increase their wages by increasing their training or by assuming additional responsibilities, including mentoring peers, accepting clients with higher needs, working less-desirable hours, doing more physically strenuous labor, or taking on leadership roles within a working group. Some contracts require transparency in paycheck calculations, mandating employers to itemize hours, overtime, and sometimes the cumulative number of sick days or holidays used, allowing employees to check the calculations.

An organizer with UFCW (grocery) Local 21 explained, “[employers] see experience as a cost and not a driver of sales.” The organizer explained that without the contracts, employers would not raise wages over time, especially for jobs viewed as requiring fewer technical skills.

Retirement and pension.

Almost all contracts include retirement or pensions. Most of these are set up in the form of trusts, with a collaborative process for management and employees to manage money and benefits. This language usually exists in a separate document referred to by the contract.

A retired member of Laborers Local 242 described how he was able to adjust his hours to make the money he needed, but also be able to retire comfortably because of his savings and pension. He explained, “I retired early. I wanted to do things that I wasn’t able to do when I was younger because I had to support the family.”

We created indicators to track evidence-based factors related to physical and psychological health, including time off and access to health care. 44–46

Paid time off.

Most contracts include the indicators of paid annual leave, paid rest periods, and bereavement leave. The amount of annual leave varies, but usually increases as the employee gains seniority. Paid rest periods are usually defined as short, 15- to 30-minute periods. Bereavement leave to attend a funeral or grieve a loss can be used for specific family members in some contracts, whereas others allow its use for a broader range of relationships.

Health care coverage.

Health insurance is included in all contracts. We did not attempt to distinguish among contracts with regard to affordability, comprehensiveness, or number of dependents covered because health care is managed by trusts, much like retirement or pension benefits.

All of the organizers discussed the benefits of union health coverage. An organizer from UFCW Local 21 explained,

Members have consistently traded wages for health benefits. They have been willing to have slowed wage increases in order to maintain their strong health benefits over and over and over. What I see if I go into a [unionized grocery] I see a much higher percentage of people who have children who rely on their health insurance.

Health and Safety

Most contracts guide how health and safety regulations are communicated to workers, including written and verbal forms.

Health and safety information.

Although most contracts include health and safety information, they are usually not very specific. For example, Teamsters’ contract 117.1, states,

[T]he Company may require the use of safety devices and safeguards and shall adopt and use practices, means, methods, operations and processes which are adequate to render such employment and place of employment safe and shall do all things necessary to protect the life and safety of all employees.

Most contracts also include a provision allowing the union to post and maintain a bulletin board to communicate information to members. Contracts also generally ensure union representative access to the worksite. For example, SEIU contract 925.2 (child-care workers) states,

The designated Stewards or Chief Stewards shall have access to the premises of [Community Development Institute Head Start] to carry out their duties subject to permission being granted in advance.

Training and mentorship.

Almost all contracts explicitly require training. Some contracts include compensation for providing mentorship to encourage more senior employees to provide support to new employees or employees taking on new roles.

One organizer from Laborers Local 242 described how important it is for workers to know how to do their work safely, for themselves, coworkers, workplace clients, and their own families. For example, a hospital demolition crew should know how to contain particulate matter to avoid contaminating patients or bringing it home to expose their children. The organizer said training ensures “If you hire a [union] laborer, you know you’re going to get the best product. We have the safest workforce. We’re the most experienced.”

Promotion of a culture of workplace safety.

Most contracts detail the employer’s responsibility to provide and maintain protective clothing and equipment. Most contracts also protect bringing a safety hazard to the attention of a supervisor. For example, SEIU contract 775.5 states, “the employee will immediately report to their Employer any working condition the employee believes threatens or endangers the health or safety of the employee or client.” Some contracts have a provision allowing workers who return to work after an injury to receive less strenuous work, or “light duty.” Both Laborers’ contracts contain this provision, an important provision for physically demanding work.

Promoting Individual, Family, and Community Well-Being

We analyzed indicators that measure the role of contracts in reinforcing social support in the work environment.

Job protections and security.

All contracts contain specific and detailed grievance procedures, the process of reporting, mediating, and resolving conflicts in the workplace. Almost all contracts confirm the right to have a union representative present during meetings with managers. Some contracts, such as SEIU 775.1, make it the employer’s responsibility to make this known:

In any case where a home care aide is the subject of a written formal warning the Employer will notify the home care aide of the purpose of the meeting and their option to have a local union representative present when the meeting is scheduled.

Most contracts also establish or maintain a labor relations or management committee. Although the language about this committee may differ, the purpose of the group is to create a space in which workers and employers can negotiate problems that arise between negotiations of new contracts.

Almost all contracts contain a commitment to creating a discrimination-free workplace. Most contracts create the opportunity for a worker to take a leave of absence without sacrificing seniority for maternity leave, further education, religious holidays (e.g., Yom Kippur, Easter), military leave (for the employee or spouse), domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or union activity.

Fair and predictable scheduling.

Most contracts include a mandatory notice of schedule changes. As UFCW contract 21.1 explains,

The Employer recognizes the desirability of giving his employees as much notice as possible in the planning of their weekly schedules of work and, accordingly, agrees to post a work schedule.

Some contracts specify the amount of notice required for a schedule change. Those that change regularly may require posting the week before. Most contracts also include an amount of time required between shifts or minimum shift length, and how employees can request additional hours.

Democratic participation.

Most contracts provide employees the opportunity to participate in union-sponsored legislative “lobby days,” or to engage in political work while being paid by their employer. As SEIU contract 925.1 explains,

As part of our ongoing campaign to provide the highest possible standard of childcare and engage in an ongoing public campaign to explain the direct relationship between funding and the quality of care, it is in each party’s best interest to provide reasonable opportunity for members of the bargaining unit to participate in these efforts.

Contracts require all union members to pay dues. Some contracts also specify how a union member can contribute to a political action fund, which generates revenue to represent employee interests in the policy arena. One home health worker explained that she is getting more involved in politics and collective bargaining because of union engagement, saying,

I like belonging to a union that believes in me as an individual and as a caregiver. They’re behind us every step of the way. They help us to look at things that otherwise we might not be aware of, like state legislation and contract negotiation.

Public health practitioners have not typically viewed unions as partners in promoting public health, nor have they explored contract negotiations as a way to ensure health protections. We suggest that this is a missed opportunity. Our findings demonstrate that union contract language advances many of the social determinants of health, including income, security, time off, access to health care, workplace safety culture, training and mentorship, predictable scheduling to ensure time with friends and family, democratic participation, and engagement with management. This article provides a provisional framework to explore further the factors that create public health opportunities in union contracts.

We examined selected union contracts in the Pacific Northwest, which may not be generalizable. Our sample included only those unions in a relationship with Puget Sound Sage, perhaps suggesting unique perspectives or priorities. We compared our sampled unions to those in the King County Labor Council, however, and although there were some industries not represented (e.g., aerospace, teachers, assembly line workers), we believe the types of workplaces in our sample are reasonably representative of the landscape of unions in the county. We did not attempt to incorporate the views of the respective employers on these contracts.

The language in the contracts we reviewed included rights won at the bargaining table along with restatements of existing city, state, and federal laws. For example, leave without pay contract provisions match the Washington State Family Leave Act. When union negotiators include these indicators in contracts, they generate awareness of health-promoting regulations and protections. Laws and policies can change, but a union contract can only change if the union agrees to renegotiate the contract or if the contract has expired. Union stewards learn the details about a contract, but cannot be expected to know the full range of laws from a variety of jurisdictions. The contract works to reinforce the knowledge of workers and their representatives. Although it was beyond the scope of our study, contracts must be enforced to actualize their health-related benefits. Effective enforcement mechanisms for contracts are also potentially beneficial to public health officials. 22,27,47

We identified many contract indicators that advance health for more than just employees. Unions generate higher prevailing wages in a community. 7,48 Unions invest in campaigns to raise wages for both union and nonunion workers, such as the $15 hourly wage initiative in SeaTac, Washington. 49,50 A safer environment for home-care and child-care workers creates safer environments for the people they serve. A culture of safety on construction sites ensures that environmental hazards are minimized for people who live nearby. Parents earning a living wage can avoid taking second jobs and use the time to engage in children’s schools or community councils. A healthy and happy workforce is more productive and less likely to leave a job, reducing the cost of turnover and absenteeism for employers. In spite of the many benefits unions confer to workplaces and communities, union membership is now limited to only 1 in 10 American employees. 4

The decline of labor union density is related to both the rise of corporate power and to mistakes made by labor. 1 After a period of radical inclusivity and left-leaning solidarity with broader political movements, unions moved toward racism and red-baiting in the 1950s, undermining their strength. 51 Unions are still working to reduce racial and gender disproportionality within their leadership. 52

Despite historical shortcomings, labor unions (and their contracts) offer an underutilized opportunity for public health innovation. As illustrated by Malinowski et al., public health practitioners often work in the “outer” layers of the social–ecological model, promoting environments that can better shape population health. 43 This is also true of labor unions. Public health practitioners could help unions negotiate more sophisticated contracts to address the social determinants of health. Public health practitioners could also work with policymakers to heighten awareness of how unions might help mitigate the forces that threaten health in the workplace and beyond. Supporting progressive labor union contracts is public health work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We acknowledge a grant from the University of Washington Harry Bridges Labor Center that made this work possible. Also, thank you to Puget Sound Sage for providing the compensation for labor union members who were interviewed.

HUMAN PARTICIPANT PROTECTION

Ethical approval for the project was provided by the University of Washington institutional review board, approval 48520-EJ.

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Labor Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 31, 2020 | Original: October 29, 2009

The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.

Origins of The Labor Movement

The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers. 

WATCH: The Labor Movement

From that time on, local craft unions proliferated in the cities, publishing lists of “prices” for their work, defending their trades against diluted and cheap labor and, increasingly, demanding a shorter workday in the face of the Industrial Revolution . Thus a job-conscious orientation was quick to emerge, and in its wake there followed the key structural elements characterizing American trade unionism. First, with the formation in 1827 of the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, central labor bodies began uniting craft unions within a single city, and then, with the creation of the International Typographical Union in 1852, national unions began bringing together local unions of the same trade from across the United States and Canada (hence the frequent union designation “international”). Although the factory system was springing up during these years, industrial workers played little part in the early trade union development. In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Did you know? In 2009, 12 percent of American workers belonged to unions.

Early Labor Unions

The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution , which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transforming economic changes of industrial capitalism ran counter to labor’s vision. The result, as early labor leaders saw it, was to raise up “two distinct classes, the rich and the poor.” Beginning with the workingmen’s parties of the 1830s, the advocates of equal rights mounted a series of reform efforts that spanned the nineteenth century. Most notable were the National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor , which reached its zenith in the mid-1880s. 

On their face, these reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all “producers” rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. But contemporaries saw no contradiction: trade unionism tended to the workers’ immediate needs, labor reform to their higher hopes. The two were held to be strands of a single movement, rooted in a common working-class constituency and to some degree sharing a common leadership. But equally important, they were strands that had to be kept operationally separate and functionally distinct.

PHOTOS: These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America

American Federation of Labor

During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes. When it refused, they joined in December 1886 to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning–hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. The founders of the AFL translated this notion into the principle of “pure and simple” unionism: only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be “furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation.”

That class formulation necessarily defined trade unionism as the movement of the entire working class. The AFL asserted as a formal policy that it represented all workers, irrespective of skill, race, religion, nationality or gender. But the national unions that had created the AFL in fact comprised only the skilled trades. Almost at once, therefore, the trade union movement encountered a dilemma: How to square ideological aspirations against contrary institutional realities?

Discrimination in The Labor Movement

As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades. But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat-packing, failed to organize the less skilled. And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic and gender divisions, the trade union movement took on a racist and sexist coloration as well. For a short period, the AFL resisted that tendency. But in 1895, unable to launch an interracial machinists’ union of its own, the Federation reversed an earlier principled decision and chartered the whites-only International Association of Machinists. Formally or informally, the color bar thereafter spread throughout the trade union movement. In 1902, blacks made up scarcely 3 percent of total membership, most of them segregated in Jim Crow locals. In the case of women and eastern European immigrants, a similar devolution occurred–welcomed as equals in theory, excluded or segregated in practice. (Only the fate of Asian workers was unproblematic; their rights had never been asserted by the AFL in the first place.)

Samuel Gompers

Gompers justified the subordination of principle to organizational reality on the constitutional grounds of “trade autonomy,” by which each national union was assured the right to regulate its own internal affairs. But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expand beyond the narrow limits–roughly 10 percent of the labor force–at which it stabilized before World War I .

In the political realm, the founding doctrine of pure-and-simple unionism meant an arm’s-length relationship to the state and the least possible entanglement in partisan politics. A total separation had, of course, never been seriously contemplated; some objectives, such as immigration restriction, could be achieved only through state action, and the predecessor to the AFL, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (1881), had in fact been created to serve as labor’s lobbying arm in Washington . Partly because of the lure of progressive labor legislation, even more in response to increasingly damaging court attacks on the trade unions, political activity quickened after 1900. With the enunciation of Labor’s Bill of Grievances (1906), the AFL laid down a challenge to the major parties. Henceforth it would campaign for its friends and seek the defeat of its enemies.

This nonpartisan entry into electoral politics, paradoxically, undercut the left-wing advocates of an independent working-class politics. That question had been repeatedly debated within the AFL, first in 1890 over Socialist Labor party representation, then in 1893-1894 over an alliance with the Populist Party and after 1901 over affiliation with the Socialist party of America. Although Gompers prevailed each time, he never found it easy. Now, as labor’s leverage with the major parties began to pay off, Gompers had an effective answer to his critics on the left: the labor movement could not afford to waste its political capital on socialist parties or independent politics. When that nonpartisan strategy failed, as it did in the reaction following World War I, an independent political strategy took hold, first through the robust campaigning of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, and in 1924 through labor’s endorsement of Robert La Follette on the Progressive ticket. By then, however, the Republican administration was moderating its hard line, evident especially in Herbert Hoover’s efforts to resolve the simmering crises in mining and on the railroads. In response, the trade unions abandoned the Progressive party, retreated to nonpartisanship, and, as their power waned, lapsed into inactivity.

The Labor Movement and The Great Depression

WATCH: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal

It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF’s organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in 1935 and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel and other basic industries. In 1938 the CIO was formally established as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of World War II , more than 12 million workers belonged to unions and collective bargaining had taken hold throughout the industrial economy.

In politics, its enhanced power led the union movement not to a new departure but to a variant on the policy of nonpartisanship. As far back as the Progressive Era, organized labor had been drifting toward the Democratic party, partly because of the latter’s greater programmatic appeal, perhaps even more because of its ethno-cultural basis of support within an increasingly “new” immigrant working class. With the coming of Roosevelt’s New Deal, this incipient alliance solidified, and from 1936 onward the Democratic Party could count on–and came to rely on–the campaigning resources of the labor movement.

Collective Bargaining

That this alliance partook of the nonpartisan logic of Gompers’s authorship–too much was at stake for organized labor to waste its political capital on third parties–became clear in the unsettled period of the early cold war. Not only did the CIO oppose the Progressive party of 1948, but it expelled the left-wing unions that broke ranks and supported Henry Wallace for the presidency that year.

The formation of the AFL-CIO in 1955 visibly testified to the powerful continuities persisting through the age of industrial unionism. Above all, the central purpose remained what it had always been–to advance the economic and job interests of the union membership. Collective bargaining performed impressively after World War II, more than tripling weekly earnings in manufacturing between 1945 and 1970, gaining for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace. But if the benefits were greater and if they went to more people, the basic job-conscious thrust remained intact. Organized labor was still a sectional movement, covering at most only a third of America’s wage earners and inaccessible to those cut off in the low-wage secondary labor market.

Women and Minorities in the Labor Movement

Nothing better captures the uneasy amalgam of old and new in the postwar labor movement than the treatment of minorities and women who flocked in, initially from the mass production industries, but after 1960 from the public and service sectors as well. Labor’s historic commitment to racial and gender equality was thereby much strengthened, but not to the point of challenging the status quo within the labor movement itself. Thus the leadership structure remained largely closed to minorities–as did the skilled jobs that were historically the preserve of white male workers–notoriously so in the construction trades but in the industrial unions as well. Yet the AFL-CIO played a crucial role in the battle for civil rights legislation in 1964-1965. That this legislation might be directed against discriminatory trade union practices was anticipated (and quietly welcomed) by the more progressive labor leaders. But more significant was the meaning they found in championing this kind of reform: the chance to act on the broad ideals of the labor movement. And, so motivated, they deployed labor’s power with great effect in the achievement of John F. Kennedy ’s and Lyndon B. Johnson ’s domestic programs during the 1960s.

Decline in Unions

This was ultimately economic, not political power, however, and as organized labor’s grip on the industrial sector began to weaken, so did its political capability. From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslaught of foreign goods. As oligopolistic and regulated market structures broke down, nonunion competition spurted, concession bargaining became widespread and plant closings decimated union memberships. The once-celebrated National Labor Relations Act increasingly hamstrung the labor movement; an all-out reform campaign to get the law amended failed in 1978. And with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, there came to power an anti-union administration the likes of which had not been seen since the Harding era.

Between 1975 and 1985, union membership fell by 5 million. In manufacturing, the unionized portion of the labor force dropped below 25 percent, while mining and construction, once labor’s flagship industries, were decimated. Only in the public sector did the unions hold their own. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17 percent of American workers were organized, half the proportion of the early 1950s.

The labor movement has never been swift to change. But if the new high-tech and service sectors seemed beyond its reach in 1989, so did the mass production industries in 1929. There is a silver lining: Compared to the old AFL, organized labor is today much more diverse and broadly based: In 2018, of the 14.7 million wage and salary workers who were part of a union (compared to 17.7 million in 1983), 25 percent are women and 28 percent are Black.

TED: The Economics Daily. Bureau of Labor Statistics .

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Report | Unions and Labor Standards

How unions help all workers

Report • By Matthew Walters and Lawrence Mishel • August 26, 2003

Briefing Paper #143

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Unions have a substantial impact on the compensation and work lives of both unionized and non-unionized workers. This report presents current data on unions’ effect on wages, fringe benefits, total compensation, pay inequality, and workplace protections.

Some of the conclusions are:

• Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%.
• Unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree.
• Strong unions set a pay standard that nonunion employers follow. For example, a high school graduate whose workplace is not unionized but whose industry is 25% unionized is paid 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries.
• The impact of unions on total nonunion wages is almost as large as the impact on total union wages.
• The most sweeping advantage for unionized workers is in fringe benefits. Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans.
• Unionized workers receive more generous health benefits than nonunionized workers. They also pay 18% lower health care deductibles and a smaller share of the costs for family coverage. In retirement, unionized workers are 24% more likely to be covered by health insurance paid for by their employer.
• Unionized workers receive better pension plans. Not only are they more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement, their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions.
• Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays).

Unions play a pivotal role both in securing legislated labor protections and rights such as safety and health, overtime, and family/medical leave and in enforcing those rights on the job. Because unionized workers are more informed, they are more likely to benefit from social insurance programs such as unemployment insurance and workers compensation. Unions are thus an intermediary institution that provides a necessary complement to legislated benefits and protections.

The union wage premium

It should come as no surprise that unions raise wages, since this has always been one of the main goals of unions and a major reason that workers seek collective bargaining. How much unions raise wages, for whom, and the consequences of unionization for workers, firms, and the economy have been studied by economists and other researchers for over a century (for example, the work of Alfred Marshall). This section presents evidence from the 1990s that unions raise the wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise total compensation by about 28%.

The research literature generally finds that unionized workers’ earnings exceed those of comparable nonunion workers by about 15%, a phenomenon known as the “union wage premium.”

H. Gregg Lewis found the union wage premium to be 10% to 20% in his two well-known assessments, the first in the early 1960s (Lewis 1963) and the second more than 20 years later (Lewis 1986). Freeman and Medoff (1984) in their classic analysis, What Do Unions Do? , arrived at a similar conclusion.

Table 1 provides several estimates of the union hourly wage premium based on household and employer data from the mid- to late 1990s. All of these estimates are based on statistical analyses that control for worker and employer characteristics such as occupation, education, race, industry, and size of firm. Therefore, these estimates show how much collective bargaining raises the wages of unionized workers compared to comparable nonunionized workers.

The data most frequently used for this analysis is the Current Population Survey (CPS) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is most familiar as the household survey used to report the unemployment rate each month. The CPS reports the wages and demographic characteristics (age, gender, education, race, marital status) of workers, including whether workers are union members or covered by a collective bargaining contract, and employment information (e.g., industry, occupation). Using these data, Hirsch and Macpherson (2003) found a union wage premium of 17.8% in 1997. Using data from a different, but also commonly used, household survey—the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)—Gundersen (2003) found a union premium of 24.5%. So, estimates from household surveys that allow for detailed controls of worker characteristics find a union wage premium ranging from 15% to 25% in the 1990s.

Another important source of workplace information, employer surveys, has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, wages, occupation, and employer characteristics—including the identification of union status—are considered more accurate in employer-based data. The disadvantage is that data from employers do not include detailed information about the characteristics of the workers (e.g. education, gender, race/ethnicity). However, the detailed occupational information and the skill ratings of jobs (education requirements, complexity, supervisory responsibilities) used in these studies are most likely adequate controls for “human capital,” or worker characteristics, making the surveys reliable for estimating the union wage premium.

Pierce (1999a) used the new Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of employers, the National Compensation Survey, to study wage determination and found a union wage premium of 17.4% in 1997. Pierce’s study was based on observations of 145,054 nonagricultural jobs from 17,246 different establishments, excluding the federal government.

In another study, Pierce (1999b) used a different employer survey—the Employment Cost Index (ECI), a precursor to the National Compensation Survey—and found a union wage premium of 20.3%. This estimate is for all nonagricultural employers except the federal government, the same sector employed in Pierce’s NCS study (though for an earlier year—1994).

These two estimates of the union wage premium from employer surveys provide a range of 17% to 20%, consistent with the range identified by the household surveys. Thus, a variety of sources show a union wage premium of between 15% and 20%.

Since unions have a greater impact on benefits than wages (see Freeman 1981), estimates of the union premium for wages alone are less than estimates of the union premium for all compensation (wages and benefits combined). That is, estimates of just the wage premium understate the full impact of unions on workers’ pay. A 1999 study by Pierce estimates the union premium for wages at 20.3% and compensation at 27.5% in the private sector (see Table 1). Thus, the union impact on total compensation is about 35% greater than the impact on wages alone. (A later section reviews the union impact on specific fringe benefits such as paid leave, health insurance, and pensions.)

Many “measurement issues” have been raised about estimates of the union wage premium. Some researchers have argued that union wage premiums are significantly underestimated by some measurements. Hirsch (2003), in particular, raises an important question regardi ng the rising use of “imputations” in the CPS. Information is “allocated,” or “imputed,” to a respondent in the CPS when they either refuse to report their earnings or a proxy respondent is unable to report earnings. Hirsch reports that earnings were imputed for fewer than 15% of the CPS in the 1980s but 31% in 2001. The method of imputing earnings to workers for whom earnings aren’t reported does not take account of their union status, thus reducing the estimates of the union wage premium. The increase in imputations has, Hirsch says, created an increasing underestimate of the union wage premium. Table 1 shows Hirsch’s estimates for the union premium in the private sector using traditional methods (18.4%) and using a correction for imputation bias (23.2%). Hirsch’s results imply that imputations depress estimates of the union wage premium for 1997 by 20%, and that the union wage premium is actually one-fourth higher than conventional estimates show.

Union wage premiums and inequality

Historically, unions have raised the wages to a greater degree for “low-skilled” than for “high-skilled” workers. Consequently, unions lessen wage inequality. Hirsch and Schumacher (1998) consider the conclusion that unions boost wages more for low- and middle-wage workers, a “universal finding” of the extensive literature on unions, wages, and worker skills. As they state:

The standard explanation for this result is that unions standardize wages by decreasing differentials across and within job positions (Freeman 1980) so that low-skilled workers receive a larger premium relative to their alternative nonunion wage.

The larger union wage premium for those with low wages, in lower-paid occupations and with less education is shown in Table 2 . For instance, the union wage premium for blue-collar workers in 1997, 23.3%, was far larger than the 2.2% union wage premium for white-collar workers. Likewise, the 1997 union wage premium for high school graduates, 20.8%, was much higher than the 5.1% premium for college graduates. Gundersen (2003) estimated the union wage premium for those with a high school degree or less at 35.5%, significantly greater than the 24.5% premium for all workers.

Card’s (1991) research provides a comprehensive picture of the impact of unions on employees by estimating the union wage premiums by “wage fifth,” where the sample is split into five equal groups of workers from the lowest wage up to the highest wage workers. As Table 2 shows, the union wage premium was far greater among low-wage workers (27.9%) than among middle-wage (18.0%) or the highest-wage workers (10.5%).

Unions reduce wage inequalities because they raise wages more at the bottom and in the middle of the wage scale than at the top. Lower-wage, middle-wage, blue-collar, and high school educated workers are also more likely than high-wage, white-collar, and college-educated workers to be represented by unions (see Table 2). These two factors—the greater union representation and the larger union wage impact for low- and mid-wage workers—are key to unionization’s role as a major factor in reducing wage inequalities (see Freeman 1980, 1982; and Freeman and Medoff 1984).

That unionization lessens wage inequality is also evident in the numerous studies that attribute a sizable share of the growth of wage inequality since 1979 to the erosion of union coverage (Freeman 1991; Card 1991; Dinardo et al. 1996; Blackburn et al. 1991; Card et al. 2003; Blanchflower and Bryson 2002). Several studies have shown that deunionization is responsible for at least 20% of the large increase in wage inequality (Mishel et al. 2003). This is especially the case among men, where steep declines in unionization among blue-collar and non-college-educated men has led to a rise in education and occupational wage gaps. Farber’s (2002) estimate shows that deunionization can explain as much as 50% of the growth in the wage gap between workers with a college education and those with a high school education.

Unions and fringe benefits

In and earlier era, non-wage compensation was referred to as “fringe benefits.” However, items such as adequate health insurance, a secure retirement pension, and sufficient and flexible paid leave to manage work and family life are no longer considered “fringe” components of pay packages. Thus, the union impact on benefits is even more critical to the lives of workers now than in the past. This section presents evidence that unionized workers are given employer-provided health and pension benefits far more frequently than comparable nonunion workers. Moreover, unionized workers are provided better paid leave and better health and pension plans.

The previous section reviewed data that showed that unions have had a greater impact in raising benefits than in raising wages. This section examines the union effect on particular benefits, primarily paid leave, health insurance, and pensions. Unions improve benefits for nonunionized workers because workers are more likely to be provided particular benefits and because the specific benefits received are better.

Table 3 provides information from the employer survey (the ECI) about the impact of unions on the likelihood that a worker will receive benefits. The table shows that unionized workers are 3.2% more likely to have paid leave, a relatively small impact, explained by the fact that nearly all workers (86%) already receive this benefit. Unions have a much greater impact on the incidence of pensions and health insurance benefits, with union workers 22.5% and 18.3% more likely to receive, respectively, employer-provided pension and health benefits.

Table 3 also shows the union impact on the financial value of benefits, including a breakdown of how much the greater value is due to greater incidence (i.e., unionized firms are more likely to offer the benefit) or to a more generous benefit that is provided.

Union workers’ paid leave benefits are 11.4% higher in dollar terms, largely because of the higher value of the benefits provided (8.0% of the total 11.4% impact). Unions have a far larger impact on pensions and health insurance, raising the value of these benefits by 56% and 77.4%, respectively. For pensions, the higher value reflects both that unionized workers are more likely to receive this benefit in the first place and that the pension plan they receive is generally a “richer” one. For health benefits, the value added by unions mostly comes from the fact that union workers receive a far more generous health plan than nonunionized workers. This factor accounts for 52.7% of the total 77.4% greater value that organized workers receive.

Table 4 provides further information on the union premium for health insurance, pensions, and paid leave benefits, drawn from a different data source (a series of supplements to the CPS) than for Table 3.1 The first two columns compare the compensation characteristics in union and nonunion settings. The difference between the union and nonunion compensation packages are presented in two ways: unadjusted (the difference between the first two columns) and adjusted (differences in characteristics other than union status such as industry, occupation, and established size). The last column presents the union premium, the percentage difference between union and nonunion compensation, calculated using the adjusted difference.

These data confirm that a union premium exists in every element of the compensation package. While 83.5% of unionized workers have employer-provided health insurance, only 62% of nonunionized workers have such a benefit. Unionized workers are 28.2% more likely than comparable nonunion workers to be covered by employer-provided health insurance. Employers with unionized workforces also provide better health insurance—they pay an 11.1% larger share of single worker coverage and a 15.6% greater share of family coverage. Moreover, deductibles are $54, or 18%, less for unionized workers. Finally, unionized workers are 24.4% more likely to receive health insurance coverage in their retirement.

Similarly, 71.9% of unionized workers have pensions provided by their employers, while only 43.8% of nonunion workers do. Thus, unionized workers are 53.9% more likely to have pension coverage. Union employers spend 36.1% more on defined benefit plans but 17.7% less on defined contribution plans. As defined benefit plans are preferable—they provide a guaranteed benefit in retirement—these data indicate that union workers are more likely to have better pension plans.

Union workers also get more paid time off. This includes having 26.6% more vacation (or 0.63 weeks—three days) than nonunion workers. Another estimate, which includes vacations and holidays, indicates that union workers enjoy 14.3% more paid time off.

Union wages, nonunion wages, and total wages

There are several ways that unionization’s impact on wages goes beyond the workers covered by collective bargaining to affect nonunion wages and labor practices. For example, in industries and occupations where a strong core of workplaces are unionized, nonunion employers will frequently meet union standards or, at least, improve their compensation and labor practices beyond what they would have provided if there were no union presence. This dynamic is sometimes called the “union threat effect,” the degree to which nonunion workers get paid more because their employers are trying to forestall unionization.

There is a more general mechanism (without any specific “threat”) in which unions have affected nonunion pay and practices: unions have set norms and established practices that become more generalized throughout the economy, thereby improving pay and working conditions for the entire workforce. This has been especially true for the 75% of workers who are not college educated. Many “fringe” benefits, such as pensions and health insurance, were first provided in the union sector and then became more generalized—though, as we have seen, not universal. Union grievance procedures, which provide “due process” in the workplace, have been mimicked in many nonunion workplaces. Union wage-setting, which has gained exposure through media coverage, has frequently established standards of what workers generally, including many nonunion workers, expect from their employers. Until, the mid-1980s, in fact, many sectors of the economy followed the “pattern” set in collective bargaining agreements. As unions weakened, especially in the manufacturing sector, their ability to set broader patterns has diminished. However, unions remain a source of innovation in work practices (e.g., training, worker participation) and in benefits (e.g., child care, work-time flexibility, sick leave).

The impact of unions on wage dynamics and the overall wage structure is not easily measurable. The only dimension that has been subject to quantification is the “threat effect,” though measuring this phenomenon is a difficult task for several reasons. First, the union presence will likely be felt most in the markets where unions are seeking to organize—the nonunion employers affected are those in competition with unionized employers. These markets vary in nature. Some of these markets are national, such as many manufacturing industries, while others are local—janitors and hotel and supermarket workers. Some markets are defined by the product—what employers sell, such as autos, tires and so on—while other markets are occupational, such as music, carpentry, and acting. Therefore, studies that compare industries cannot accurately capture the economic landscape on which unions operate and do not adequately measure the “threat effect.”

A second difficulty in examining the impact of the “threat effect” on nonunion wages is identifying a measure, or proxy, for the union presence. In practice, economists have used union density, the percentage of an industry that is unionized, as their proxy. The assumption here is that employers in highly organized settings face a higher threat of union organization than a nonunion employer in a mostly unorganized industry. In broad strokes, this is a reasonable assumption. However, taken too literally and simply, union density can be misleading. First, it is not reasonable to consider that small changes in union density—say, from 37% to 35%, or vice-versa—will produce observable changes in nonunion wages. Any measurement of the “threat effect” that relies on small changes in union density will almost surely—and erroneously—yield little or no effect. Second, the relationship between union density and nonunion wages is not linear. Union density is not likely to produce any threat effect until some threshold level of unionization is reached, as much as 30% to 40%. That is, unionization of 20% in a particular industry may have no impact but 40% unionization may be sufficient to make employers aware of union organizing and union pay and practices. Empirically, this means a 20 percentage point change in unionization density from zero to 20 may have no effect, but a change from 20 to 40 will have an effect. Likewise, a union presence of 60% to 70% may provide as strong a threat, or ability to set standards, as unionization of 80% or more. Therefore, the relationship between union density and nonunion wages depends on the level of density: significant effects after a threshold level of density (e.g., 30% to 40%), a greater effect when density is higher, but no continued increase of impact at the highest densities.

The sensitivity of the results to the specification—a linear or nonlinear specification of union density—is seen in studies of the union threat effect. A linear specification assumes that small changes at any level have the same impact, while a nonlinear specification allows the union effect to differ at different levels of unionization—perhaps less at low levels and more at medium or high levels. In an important early study of the “threat effect,” Freeman and Medoff (1981) examined the relationship between union density and nonunion wages and compensation in manufacturing. They found that union density had no association with higher nonunion pay (the relationship was positive but not statistically significant). Mishel (1982) replicated those results (p. 138) but also employed a nonlinear, qualitative specification (Table 4) that found large threat effects: nonunion establishments in industries with union density from 40% to 60% and from 60% to 80% paid 6.5% and 7.3% more, respectively, than nonunion establishments with low union density (0% to 40%).

Farber (2002, 2003) has conducted the most recent analysis of union threat effects, the relationship between union density and nonunion wages across industries, in the private sector. Farber’s analysis, which uses a linear specification of union density (i.e., assumes small changes at any level have an impact), combines sectors where threat effects, if any, are geographic (hotel, construction, and janitorial work) and national (manufacturing). In one analysis, Farber finds a positive threat effect for the 1970s, 1980s, and mid-1990s. For example, the average nonunion worker in an industry with 25% union density had wages 7.5% higher because of unionization’s presence. Farber’s results show a lower, but still significant, threat effect in later years, though the effect on the average nonunion wage has diminished because of the erosion of union density. Farber also shows, not surprisingly, that the threat effect is greater for workers with no more than high school degree but minimal for those with a college degree.

Farber pursues much more stringent tests of the threat effect in models that use “industry fixed effects” in order to ensure that the effect of other industry characteristics are not wrongly being attributed to union density. Farber’s results in this further analysis show a threat effect among all workers in the 1970s and 1980s but not in the 1990s. Nevertheless, threat effects still prevailed across decades for those without high school degrees and for those with high school degrees, and in the 1980s for those with some college education. For example, nonunionized high school graduates (the largest category of workers in the United States) earned 2.0% to 5.5% higher wages in industries with 25% unionization than they did in completely nonunionized industries.

The union effect on total nonunion wages is nearly comparable to the effect of unions on total union wages. Table 5 illustrates the union impact on union, nonunion, and average wages among workers with a high school education. Farber’s stringent model from 1983 estimates that, for high school workers in a 25% unionized industry, the “threat effect” raises the average nonunion wage by 5.0%, thereby lifting the average wage by 3.8%. Assuming that unions have raised the wages of union workers by 20%, this raises the average high school wage by 5% (25% of 20%). The total effect of unions on the average high school wage in this example is an 8.8% wage increase, 3.8 percentage points of which are due to the higher wages earned by nonunion workers and 5.0 percentage points of which are due to the union wage premium enjoyed by nonunionized workers.

Two conclusions can be reached based on these studies. First, unions have a positive impact on the wages of nonunion workers in industries and markets where unions have a strong presence. Second, because the nonunion sector is large, the union effect on the overall aggregate wage comes almost as much from the impact of unions on nonunion workers as on union workers.

Unions and workplace protections

An extensive array of labor laws and regulations protects workers in the labor market and the workplace. From the National Labor Relations Act and Social Security Act of 1935 to the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993, labor unions have been instrumental in securing labor legislation and standards. However, beyond their role in initiating and advocating enactment of these laws and regulations, unions have also played an important role in enforcing workplace regulations. Unions have provided labor protections for their members in three important ways: 1) they have been a voice for workers in identifying where laws and regulations are needed, and have been influential in getting these laws enacted; 2) they have provided information to members about workers’ rights and available programs; and 3) they have encouraged their members to exercise workplace rights and participate in programs by reducing fear of employer retribution, helping members navigate the necessary procedures, and facilitating the handling of workers’ rights disputes (Weil 2003; Freeman and Medoff 1984; Freeman and Rogers 1999).

Unions have played a prominent role in the enactment of a broad range of labor laws and regulations covering areas as diverse as overtime pay, minimum wage, the treatment of immigrant workers, health and retirement coverage, civil rights, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation, and leave for care of newborns and sick family members. Common to all of these rules is a desire to provide protections for workers either by regulating the behavior of employers or by giving workers access to certain benefits in times of need (Weil 2003; Davis 1986; Amberg 1998). Over the years, these rules have become mainstays of the American workplace experience, constituting expressions of cherished public values (Gottesman 1991; Freeman and Medoff 1984).

Less well recognized perhaps, is the important role that unions play in ensuring that labor protections are not just “paper promises” at the workplace. Government agencies charged with the enforcement of regulations cannot monitor every workplace nor automate the issuance of insurance claims resulting from unemployment or injury. In practice, the effectiveness of the implementation of labor protections depends on the worker’s decision to act. This is done either by reporting an abuse or filing a claim. Unions have been crucial in this aspect by giving workers the relevant information about their rights and the necessary procedures, but also by facilitating action by limiting employer reprisals, correcting disinformation, aggregating multiple claims, providing resources to make a claim, and negotiating solutions to disputes on behalf of workers (Freeman and Rogers 1999; Weil 2003; Hirsch, et al. 1997).

Evidence of the vital role of unions in implementing labor protections can be found in the research on various programs and benefits. Union membership significantly increases the likelihood that a worker will file a claim or report an abuse. Examples of this research can be found in such areas as unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, pensions, and the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime provision.

Unemployment insurance

Unemployment insurance (UI) is a joint federal and state program that was created in the Social Security Act of 1935 to provide some income replacement to workers who lose their job through no fault of their own. Budd and McCall (1997) offer a cost-benefit decision-making analysis to explain the costs facing the unemployed worker in filing a UI claim. In a system with complex eligibility rules and benefit calculations and a lack of uniformity among states regarding these rules, the difficulty, or “cost,” of obtaining information is formidable. In fact, the main reason that many unemployed workers never file a claim is because they thought they were not eligible (Wandner and Stettner 2000). The threat of an employer retaliating by not rehiring a laid-off worker might be another cost weighing on the decision to file a claim. Unions can help offset the costs of workers who are laid off.

Primarily, unions provide information to workers about benefit expectations, rules, and procedures, and dispel stigmas that might be attached to receiving a social benefit. Unions also can negotiate in their contracts layoff recall procedures based on seniority and protection against firing for other than a just cause, as well as help workers build files in the case of a disputed claim (Budd and McHall 1997). Additionally, the union-wage differential reduces the likelihood that unemployed workers will be ineligible for benefits because their pay is too low (Wenger 1999).

Budd and McHall (1997) have estimated that union representation increases the likelihood of an unemployed worker in a blue-collar occupation receiving UI benefits by approximately 23%. At the peak of UI coverage in 1975, one in every two unemployed workers received UI benefits. By the mid-1980s, the ratio of claims to unemployed workers (the recipiency rate) had fallen to almost 30%. Blank and Card (1991) found that the decline in unionization explained one-third of the decline in UI recipiency over this period. These findings underscore the difference unions make in ensuring that the unemployment insurance system works. Considering that UI acts as a stabilizer for the economy during times of recession, the role of unions in this program is pivotal (Wandner and Stettner 2000).

Worker’s compensation

Laws governing workers’ compensation are primarily made at the state level (with the exception of federal longshoremen), but they generally form an insurance system in cases where a worker is injured or becomes ill at the workplace. The employer is liable in the system, regardless of fault, and in return they are protected from lawsuits and further liability. Once again, lack of information about eligibility and the necessary procedures for filing a claim forms the greatest obstacle to receipt of benefits. Fear of employer-imposed penalties and employer disinformation are important other factors weighed by workers deciding whether to act.

As with unemployment insurance, unions provide information to workers through their representatives, and they often negotiate procedures to handle indemnity claims. Through grievance procedures and negotiated contracts, unions protect workers from employer retaliation and, furthermore, act to dispel the notion among workers that employer retaliation is commonplace (Hirsch et al. 1997).

Hirsch et al. (1997) found that, after controlling for a number of demographic and occupational factors, union members are 60% more likely to file an indemnity claim than nonunion workers. Employers and the private insurance companies that sell worker’s compensation insurance policies have mutual interests in denying claims to limit costs (Biddle 2001). According to Biddle, higher denial rates lead to lower claim rates. The robust finding of Hirsch et al. demonstrates that unions provide a needed counterbalance to this interest.

Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)

The Occupation Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) provided the foundation for the Occupation Safety and Health Administration, which enforces safety and health standards at places of work. The administration’s purpose is to limit work-related injury, illness, and death due to known unsafe working conditions. They currently have only 2,100 inspectors to monitor over seven million establishments. Enforcement of OSHA regulations presents an obvious challenge; OSHA implementation requires worker action to initiate complaints.

In two studies of OSHA and unions in the manufacturing and construction industries (1991a and 1991b), Weil found unions greatly improve OSHA enforcement. In the manufacturing industry, for example, the probability that OSHA inspections would be initiated by worker complaints was as much as 45% higher in unionized workplaces than in nonunion ones. Unionized establishments were also as much as 15% more likely to be the focus of programmed or targeted inspections in the manufacturing industry. In addition, Weil found that in unionized settings workers were much more likely to exercise their “walkaround” rights (accompanying an OSHA inspector to point out potential violations), inspections lasted longer, and penalties for noncompliance were greater. In the construction industry, Weil estimated that unions raise the probability of OSHA inspections by 10%.

In addition to the findings above, Weil notes that the union differential could be even larger if OSHA’s resources were not so limited. He claims, “Implementation of OSHA seems highly dependent upon the presence of a union at the workplace” (Weil 1991a). Following the trend of declining unionization, OSHA claims have dropped from their peak in 1985 of over 71,500 and are currently at close to 37,500 (Siskind 2002; OSHA 2003).

Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

Passed in 1993, the FMLA grants workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period to care for newborn or newly adopted children, or in case of a personal or family member’s health condition. The leave taker is guaranteed the same or equivalent position upon return. One of the most striking characteristics of the act is that less than an estimated 60% of employees covered by the FMLA are not even aware that it exists. There is also widespread misunderstanding on the part of the employer about whom the act covers and when it applies. There is evidence that this leads employers to reject legally entitled leaves (Budd and Brey 2000).

According to Budd and Brey (2000), union members were about 10% more likely to have heard of the FMLA and understand whether or not they were eligible. Union members were found to have significantly less anxiety about losing their job or suffering other employer-imposed penalties for taking leave. And although the authors did not find union membership significantly increases the likelihood that a worker would take leave, they did find that union members were far more likely to receive full pay for leave taken.

The biggest obstacle to workers exercising their rights under the FMLA—besides the fact that the leave is unpaid rather than paid—is information, since only a very slim majority has even heard of the act. With the exception of a $100 fine for failing to post a notice, employers have little incentive to inform employees of their rights. Unions are one of the few institutions to create awareness about FMLA’s existence and regulations.

Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

This act, passed in 1938, had two main features: first, it established a federal minimum wage. Second, it established the 40-hour work week for hourly wage earners, with an overtime provision of time and a half the hourly wage for work done beyond 40 hours. Trejo (1991) examined the union effect on compliance of the latter part of the FLSA, finding that employer compliance with the overtime pay regulation rose sharply with the presence of a union. He hypothesizes that this result reflects the policing function of unions because unions often report violations to enforcement agencies.

Summary: union impact on workplace protections

The research evidence clearly shows that the labor protections enjoyed by the entire U.S. workforce can be attributed in large part to unions. The workplace laws and regulations, which unions helped to pass, constitute the majority of the labor and industrial relations policies of the United States. However, these laws in and of themselves are insufficient to change employer behavior and/or to regulate labor practices and policies. Research has shown convincingly that unions have played a significant role in enforcing these laws and ensuring that workers are protected and have access to benefits to which they are legally entitled. Unions make a substantial and measurable difference in the implementation of labor laws.

Legislated labor protections are sometimes considered alternatives to collective bargaining in the workplace, but the fact of the matter is that a top-down strategy of legislating protections may not be influential unless there is also an effective voice and intermediary for workers at the workplace—unions. In all of the research surveyed, no institutional factor appears as capable as unions of acting in workers’ interests (Weil 2003). Labor legislation and unionization are best thought of as complements, not substitutes.

This paper has presented evidence on some of the advantages that unionized workers enjoy as the result of union organization and collective bargaining: higher wages; more and better benefits; more effective utilization of social insurance programs; and more effective enforcement of legislated labor protections such as safety, health, and overtime regulations. Unions also set pay standards and practices that raise the wages of nonunionized workers in occupations and industries where there is a strong union presence. Collective bargaining fuels innovations in wages, benefits, and work practices that affect both unionized and nonunionized workers.

However, this review does not paint a full picture of the role of unions in workers lives, as unions enable due process in the workplace and facilitate a strong worker voice in the broader community and in politics. Many observers have stated, correctly, that a strong labor movement is essential to a thriving democracy.

Nor does this review address how unionism and collective bargaining affect individual firms and the economy more generally. Analyses of the union effect on firms and the economy have generally found unions to be a positive force, improving the performance of firms and contributing to economic growth (Freeman and Medoff 1984; Mishel and Voos 1992; Belman 1992; Belman and Block 2002; Stiglitz 2000; Freeman and Kleiner 1999; Hristus and Laroche 2003; with a dissenting view in Hirsch 1997). There is nothing in the extensive economic analysis of unions to suggest that there are economic costs that offset the positive union impact on the wages, benefits, and labor protections of unionized and nonunionized workers. Unions not only improve workers’ benefits, they also contribute to due process and provide a democratic voice for workers at the workplace and in the larger society.

— August 2003

1. The ECI data and the March CPS supplements show different benefit coverage rates with a union differential in coverage lower in the ECI than the CPS. This may reflect that the CPS reports individuals’ coverage while the ECI reports the coverage of occupational groups in establishments. The ECI overstates nonunion benefit coverage to the extent that uncovered nonunion workers are present in unionized occupation groups.

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Wenger, Jeff. 2001. Divided We Fall: Deserving Workers Slip Through America’s Patchwork Unemployment Insurance System. Briefing Paper, Economic Policy Institute. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.

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U.S. Department of the Treasury

Labor unions and the u.s. economy.

By Laura Feiveson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomics

Today, the Treasury Department released a first-of-its-kind report on labor unions, highlighting the evidence that unions serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large. Over the last half century, middle-class households have experienced stagnating wages, rising income volatility, and reduced intergenerational mobility, even as the economy as a whole has prospered. Unions can improve the well-being of middle-class workers in ways that directly combat these negative trends. Pro-union policy can make a real difference to middle-class households by raising their incomes, improving their work environments, and boosting their job satisfaction. In doing so, unions can help to make the economy more equitable and robust.

Over the last century, union membership rates and income inequality have diverged, as shown in Figure 1. Union membership peaked in the 1950s at one-third of the workforce.  At that time, despite pervasive racial and gender discrimination, overall income inequality was close to its lowest level since its peak before the Great Depression, and was continuing to fall.  Over the subsequent decades, union membership steadily declined, while income inequality began to steadily rise after a trough in the 1970s. In 2022, union membership plateaued at 10 percent of workers while the top one percent of income earners earned almost 20 percent of total income.

Figure 1: Union Membership and Inequality

While the overall U.S. economy has grown over the past few decades, the rise in inequality can be a proxy for the experience of many middle-class households. The income of the median family rose only 0.6 percent per year, in contrast to average personal income per household which rose 1.1 percent per year, as seen in Figure 2.  And, notably, other markers of middle-class stability have deteriorated since the 1970s. Income has become more volatile, [1] the amount of time spent on vacation has fallen, [2] and middle-class Americans are less prepared for retirement. [3] Intergenerational mobility has declined—90 percent of children born in the 1940s earned more than their parents did at age 30, while only half of children born in the mid-1980s did the same. [4]  

Figure 2: Income and Wage Growth since the 1960s

So, how could unions help? Treasury’s report shows that unions have the potential to address some of these negative trends by raising middle-class wages, improving work environments, and promoting demographic equality. Of course, unions should not be the only solution to these structural trends. But the evidence below and in the report suggests that unions can be useful in building the economy from the middle out.

Wages 

One of the most oft-cited benefits of unions is the so-called “union wage premium”—the amount that union members make above and beyond non-members.  While simple comparisons of the wages of union workers and nonunion workers find that union workers typically make about 20 percent more than nonunion workers, [5] economists turn to other types of analysis to capture causal effects of unions on wages. The first approach controls for many worker and occupation characteristics with the goal of comparing the wages earned by two similar workers that differ only in their union status. The other empirical approach is “regression discontinuity analysis,” which compares the wages in workplaces which just barely passed a vote to unionize against wages in workplaces that barely failed to pass the unionization vote. All in all, the evidence from these two approaches points to a union wage premium of around 10 to 15 percent, with larger effects for longer-tenured workers. [6]

Work environments

Worker wellbeing is greatly affected by non-wage benefits. Some benefits, such as healthcare benefits and retirement benefits, are a part of the compensation package and have substantial monetary value. Other features of the work environment, like flexible scheduling or workplace safety regulations, may not have direct monetary value but could still be highly valued by workers. For example, one study estimated that the average worker is willing to give up 20 percent of wages to avoid having their schedule frequently changed by their employer on short notice. [7] Another study, co-authored by Secretary Yellen, found that 80 percent of people who like their jobs cite a non-wage reason as the primary cause of their satisfaction and, conversely, 80 percent of people who dislike  their jobs cite non-wage reasons to explain their dissatisfaction. [8]

There is strong evidence that unions improve both fringe benefits and non-wage features of the workplace. Figure 3 shows how much more likely it is for a union worker to be offered certain amenities than a nonunion worker. While these simple comparisons reflect correlations only, studies that use more robust empirical approaches find the same: unions have had a large hand in improving work environments on many dimensions and, in doing so, raise the wellbeing of workers and their families. [9]

Figure 3: Fringe Benefits and Amenities

Workplace Equality

The diverse demographics of modern union membership mean that the benefits of any policy that strengthens today’s unions would be felt across the population.Union membership is now roughly equal across men and women. In 2021, Black men had a particularly high union representation rate at 13 percent, as compared to the population average of 10 percent. [10]  

Unions promote within-firm equality by adopting explicit anti-discrimination measures, supporting anti-discrimination legislation and enforcement, and promoting wage-setting practices that are less susceptible to implicit bias. As an example of egalitarian wage-setting practices, single rate or automatic progression wage structures contribute to lower within-firm income inequality compared to firms that make individual determinations. [11] These types of practices, and others like publicly available pay schedules, benefit women and vulnerable workers who can be less likely to negotiate aggressively for pay raises. 

Empirical studies have confirmed that unions have, indeed, closed race and gender gaps within firms. For example, one study finds that the wage gap between Black and white women was significantly reduced due to union measures. [12] Another study provides evidence of how collective bargaining has reduced gender wage gaps amongst teachers. [13]

The positive effects of unions are not limited to union workers. Nonunionized firms in competition with unionized workplaces may choose to raise wages, change hiring practices, or improve their workplace environment to attract workers. [14] Unions can also affect workplace norms by, say, lobbying for workplace safety improvements, or advocating for changes in minimum wage laws. [15] The empirical evidence finds that these positive spillovers exist. Each 1 percentage point increase in private-sector union membership rates translates to about a 0.3 percent increase in nonunion wages. These estimates are larger for workers without a college degree, the majority of America’s workforce. [16]  

Unions may also produce benefits for communities that extend beyond individual workers and employers by enhancing social capital and civic engagement. Union members vote 12 percentage points more often than nonunion members, and nonunion members in union households vote 3 percentage points more often than individuals in nonunion households. [17] In addition, union members are more likely to donate to charity, attend community meetings, participate in a neighborhood project, and volunteer for an organization. [18]

Increased unionization has the potential to contribute to the reversal of the stark increase in inequality seen over the last half century. In turn, increased financial stability to those in the middle or bottom of the income distribution could alleviate borrowing constraints, allowing workers to start businesses, build human capital, and exploit investment opportunities. [19]  Reducing inequality can also promote economic resilience by reducing the financial fragility of the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution, making these Americans less sensitive to negative income shocks and thus lessening economic volatility. [20] In short, unions can promote economy-wide growth and resilience.

All in all, the evidence presented in Treasury’s report challenges the view that worker empowerment holds back economic prosperity. In addition to their effect on the economy through more equality, unions can have a positive effect on productivity through employee engagement and union voice effects, providing a road map for the type of union campaigns that could lead to additional growth. [21] One such example found that patient outcomes improved in hospitals where registered nurses unionized. [22]

The Biden-Harris Administration recognizes the benefits of unions to the middle class and the broader economy and has taken actions, outlined in Treasury’s report, to empower workers. There have been promising signs: union petitions in 2022 rose to their highest level since 2015, [23] and public opinion in support of unions is at its highest level in over 50 years. [24] The evidence summarized here and in Treasury’s report suggest these burgeoning signs of strengthening worker power are good news for the middle class and the economy as a whole. 

[1] Dynan, Karen, Douglas Elmendorf, and Daniel Sichel. 2012. “The Evolution of Household Income Volatility.” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 12 (2).

[2] Van Dam, Andrew. 2023. “The mystery of the disappearing vacation day.” The Washington Post, February 10, 2023.

[3] Johnson, Richard W., and Karen E. Smith. 2022. “How Might Millennials Fare in Retirement?” Urban Institute , September 2022.

[4] Chetty, et al. (2017).

[5] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2023. Table 2.: Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by union affiliation and selected characteristics. Last modified January 19, 2023.

[6] For example: Gittleman, Maury, and Morris M. Kleiner. 2016. "Wage effects of unionization and occupational licensing coverage in the United States."  ILR Review  69 (1): 142–172; Kleiner, Morris M., and Alan B. Krueger. 2013. “Analyzing the Extent and Influence of Occupational Licensing on the Labor Market.” Journal of Labor Economics 31 (2): S173–S202; DiNardo, John, and David S. Lee. 2004. “Economic Impacts of New Unionization on Private Sector Employers: 1984–2001.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 119 (4): 1383–1441; Frandsen, Brigham R. 2021. “The Surprising Impacts of Unionization: Evidence from Matched Employer-Employee Data.” Journal of Labor Economics 39 (4): 861–894.

[7] Mas, Alexandre, and Amanda Pallais. 2017. "Valuing alternative work arrangements."  American Economic Review  107 (12): 3722–59.

[8] Akerlof, George A., Andrew K. Rose, and Janet L. Yellen. 1988. "Job switching and job satisfaction in the US labor market."  Brookings Papers on Economic Activity  1988 (2): 495–594.

[9] Knepper, Matthew. 2020. “From the Fringe to the Fore: Labor Unions and Employee Compensation.” The Review of Economics and Statistics  102 (1): 98–112.

[10] Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and author’s calculations using BLS data, accessed through IPUMS. Data reflect 2022 values. Sample is employed 16+ year olds. Excludes workers represented by, but not a member of, unions.

[11] See, e.g., Card (1996) and Freeman (1982). Freeman, Richard B. 1982. "Union wage practices and wage dispersion within establishments." ILR Review 36 (1): 3–21.

[12] Rosenfeld, Jake, and Meredith Kleykamp. 2012. “Organized Labor and Racial Wage Inequality in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 117 (5): 1460–1502.

[13] Biasi, Barbara, and Heather Sarsons. 2022. "Flexible wages, bargaining, and the gender gap."  The Quarterly Journal of Economics  137 (1): 215–266.

[14] Fortin, Nicole M., Thomas Lemieux, and Neil Lloyd. 2021. "Labor market institutions and the distribution of wages: The role of spillover effects."  Journal of Labor Economics  39 (S2): S369–S412; Taschereau-Dumouchel, Mathieu. 2020. "The Union Threat."  The Review of Economic Studies  87 (6): 2859–2892.

[15] The impact of changes in government policy arising out of union advocacy is not the focus of this paper; however, Ahlquist (2017) suggests that advocacy plays an important role in unions’ impacts on the labor market. Spillovers and “threat effects” within the labor market, however, are discussed in this paper. Ahlquist, John S. 2017. “Labor Unions, Political Representation, and Economic Inequality.” Annual Review of Political Science 20 (1): 409–432. 

[16] Note: Rosenfeld, Denice, and Laird (2016) do not interpret their estimates causally. Their approach suffers from many of the CPS’s sample size limitations. Although the CPS ostensibly reports quite detailed occupational codes, Rosenfeld, Denice, and Laird estimate regressions with only four occupational codes and 18 industry codes. This data limitation greatly increases the risks that the regression-adjusted approach cannot control for selection effects into unionization. 

[17] This 12-percentage-point union voting premium largely reflects socioeconomic factors associated with individuals who join a union. However, when comparing members with non-members who exhibit similar characteristics, there remains a union voting premium of 4 percentage points. Freeman, Richard B. 2003. “What Do Unions Do…to Voting?” National Bureau of Economic Research , working paper no. 9992.

[18] Zullo, Roland. 2011. “Labor Unions and Charity.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 64 (4): 699–711. 

[19]  Aghion, P., E. Caroli, and C. Garcia-Penalosa. 1999. “Inequality and Economic Growth: The Perspective of the New Growth Theories.” Journal of Economic Literature 37 (4): 1615–60.

[20]  Kumhof, Michael, Romain Rancière, and Pablo Winant. 2015. “Inequality, Leverage, and Crises.” American Economic Review 105 (3): 1217–45.

[21] Doucouliagos, Christos, Richard B. Freeman, and Patrice Laroche. 2017. The Economics of Trade Unions: A study of a Research Field and Its Findings . London: Routledge.

[22] Dube, Arindrajit, Ethan Kaplan, and Owen Thompson. 2016. “Nurse unions and patient outcomes.”  ILR Review  69 (4): 803–833.

[23] National Labor Relations Board. 2022. “Election Petitions Up 53%, Board Continues to Reduce Case Processing Time in FY22.” Press release. October 6, 2022.  https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/election-petitions-up-53-board-continues-to-reduce-case-processing-time-in .

[24] McCarthy, Justin. 2022. “U.S. Approval of Labor Unions at Highest Point Since 1965.” Gallup , August 30, 202 2.

How US Labor Law Constrains Unions’ Political Activity

A growing number of unions have taken a stand against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Yet US labor law throws up major obstacles to unions using their leverage to press political demands, including the demand for a cease-fire.

As university encampments have become the center of American popular resistance to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the most powerful voices in the country calling for a cease-fire continue to be labor unions . For many, the logical next step after endorsing a cease-fire would be for unions to take more concrete actions to press this demand. The problem for unions is figuring out how to maximize pressure on the corporate and political classes who enthusiastically (and profitably) support Israel’s apartheid regime and genocide in Gaza, given that US labor law intentionally restricts the ability of unions to use workplace actions for political ends — like striking to stop a war.

The difficulty is that US labor law generally only protects workplace actions when there is a nexus between what is being protested and the working conditions of the employees taking action. Generally, rights to free speech and political expression stop at the workplace door. In this respect, bosses have greater control over workers than the elected government does over citizens, because the Constitution restricts governments but not private actors. (Even government agencies have more power to restrict expression when they are acting as employers.) This means that, with few exceptions, bosses can easily squash their workers’ political expression and speech.

A History of Making Effective Methods Illegal or Unprotected

The difference between an illegal activity and an unprotected activity is important, but often it makes little difference for workers. If an activity is illegal, then there are legal repercussions for doing it, like criminal charges or liability for damages. These exist on top of any employment repercussions. If an activity is not protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), then it means that workers can be fired for doing it and have no legal recourse for getting their jobs back. This vulnerability stems from the absence of constitutional rights in the workplace.

US labor law has a long history of taking tactics that unions use successfully and making them illegal or unprotected. After the passage of the NLRA in 1935 gave workers and unions legal rights to organize, strike, and bargain collectively, unions stepped up political donations to worker-friendly candidates. In 1943, Congress lumped unions in with banks and corporations as entities forbidden to donate to federal candidates. The sit-down strikes that were so effective in the late 1930s were soon declared illegal by the Supreme Court . A similar fate befell intermittent strikes , which are not illegal, but were determined to be unprotected.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which established a minimum wage and overtime pay for hours over forty, put so much money into workers’ pockets that it had to be reined in. In 1946, the Supreme Court held that “time during which an employee is necessarily required to be on the employer’s premises, on duty or at a prescribed workplace” counted as work for FLSA purposes. Within six months, unions and employees had filed 1,500 lawsuits seeking $6 billion ($93.67 billion in 2023 dollars) in unpaid wages.

Congress scurried in to defend capital by enacting the Portal-to-Portal Act in 1947, which excluded most “work-adjacent” time by only counting “principal activities” as work that requires compensation under the FLSA. It also prohibited unions from bringing FLSA lawsuits on behalf of their members. The pendulum has swung so far the other way on this issue that, in 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously held that an Amazon contractor could legally force its employees to stand in line for twenty-five minutes for a security screening at the end of their shift without paying them for that time. (If anyone besides your employer did this, we would call it false imprisonment.)

As we’ve seen over the past few years, a strike is the most powerful workplace action a union can take, and a credible strike threat one of its most powerful bargaining chips. That is why most collective bargaining agreements have “no-strike clauses,” in which the union agrees not to call a strike during the term of the contract in exchange for other benefits (often binding arbitration). It is illegal for a unit with a “no-strike clause” to go on strike unless the employer commits “serious” unfair labor practices.

Other steps can also be powerful, especially if they put pressure on supervisors who are stuck between the workers and management. But these actions are only protected under certain conditions.

Restrictions on Workplace Actions as Political Speech

In the context of action on something like the genocide in Gaza, the most important restriction on unions is the ban on “secondary boycotts.” A secondary boycott is when a union uses concerted action (strikes, picketing, boycotts, etc.) to either pressure someone besides the primary employer into action, or to pressure the primary employer to take action against another party. The only exception is that employees are allowed to honor a lawful strike or refuse to cross a lawful picket line.

What makes this ban so important is that not only are secondary boycotts illegal — but they are the only unfair labor practice I’m aware of that allows someone to bring a case directly to court instead of going through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This is a huge thumb on the scale in management’s favor.

So under Supreme Court precedent, a labor union refusing to handle goods or striking until an employer divests from Israeli companies or war manufacturing would be illegal and put the union on the hook for damages. In Longshoremen v. Allied International , for instance, the International Longshoremen’s Association refused to handle cargo coming to or from the Soviet Union in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Allied was a company that imported goods from the Soviet Union; Allied had hired a shipping company called Waterman to ship its goods, and Waterman hired John T. Clark and Son, which was under a contract with the longshoremen, to unload its ships. The Supreme Court held that the longshoremen’s actions were an illegal secondary boycott, and that the union had to pay damages to Allied.

Less than three months later, however, the court held that a boycott of white businesses by a local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch seeking equal rights in the community was a valid exercise of First Amendment activities. Under US law, the First Amendment simply does not exist within the employer-employee relationship.

If a union today refused to handle goods (including war materials) heading to or from Israel in protest of its genocide of Palestinians, there is no doubt the court would reach the same conclusion it did in Longshoremen . This means that, while the refusal or strike may send a powerful message in the short term, the companies profiting from the genocide would ultimately suffer no loss — their bloodstained profits would be covered by the legal damages and paid for by union-member dues.

There are, of course, less dramatic — and typically less powerful — actions that unions can take. But while the NLRB is generally more protective of workers than the Supreme Court, the board still requires a nexus between working conditions and what workers are protesting. In Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB , the Supreme Court upheld an NLRB ruling that a union distributing a flyer that included political messaging (opposing right-to-work laws and condemning President Richard Nixon’s veto of a minimum-wage increase) was protected by the NLRA. The court held that these issues were related enough to employees’ working conditions to be protected.

Earlier this year, the NLRB issued a decision in Home Depot that held that employees putting “BLM” (for “Black Lives Matter”) on their company-issued uniform aprons was protected activity because there was a nexus between the BLM movement at large and the racial discrimination by management and supervisors that employees were protesting. This is the most expansive ruling yet on what messages employers must allow employees to express at work — and even then, the expression was allowed only because it was related to specific working conditions at that store.

The Path Forward

There is little hope that unions will be legally able to directly engage in broader politics via workplace actions anytime soon. Passage of the PRO Act would make secondary boycotts legal, but that does not mean they would be protected — employers could still legally fire employees who participate in them And while in Eastex the court gave an opening for unions by saying that workers are protected when they seek to change conditions for workers generally or when they act on behalf of other workers to build solidarity for future disputes, it is hard to see many courts applying that logic to Palestinian workers.

But there are other ways unions can support the people of Palestine, which some unions have made use of . When universities use force against protests that include workers, they may be turning a geopolitical issue into a workplace one. UAW Local 4811, which represents forty-eight thousand grad students and academic workers in the University of California system, has gone on strike in response to the working conditions created by the university’s crackdown on the peaceful protesters. The local’s strike vote announcement cited unsafe work conditions caused by the university failing to stop mob violence against the protesters and calling in the police to violently disperse their encampments.

Other unions have filed unfair labor practice charges based on unilateral changes in work rules and policies (like changes to free speech and expressive conduct policies aimed at the antigenocide protesters) and the creation of unsafe work conditions. These charges, if upheld by the NLRB, would be massive wins for unions. Strikes against unfair labor practices have a special status in labor law: while a worker engaged in an economic strike can be permanently replaced, a worker striking over unfair labor practices must be reinstated even if the employer hired a permanent replacement for them during the strike.

US labor law outlaws and discourages unions from acting on issues bigger than the workplace. Still, if the last few years have taught us anything, it is that labor can find a way. When an effective tactic is outlawed, unionists can develop new tactics. But one thing that has never changed is that capitalists need workers a lot more than workers need them — and when workers find ways to wield that collective power, they can win big changes.

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Stephen R. Keeney is a former union staff representative who currently works as a union-side labor lawyer at Doll, Jansen & Ford in Dayton, Ohio, where he is a member of the Union Lawyers Alliance.

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Biden’s labor report card: Historian gives ‘Union Joe’ a higher grade than any president since FDR

Professor of History, University of Rhode Island

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Joe Biden has pledged repeatedly to go further than any of his predecessors with his support for U.S. labor rights.

“I intend to be the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden said at a White House meeting in September 2021 that brought together ordinary workers, labor leaders and government officials.

He has expressed this intention many times, sometimes clarifying his goals.

For example, in 2023 he said in Chicago that his administration was “making it easier to empower workers by making it easier to join a union.”

Based on my research regarding the history of organized labor in America , I would give Biden an A-minus for his record on workers rights. In my view, the man dubbed “ Union Joe ” has lived up to the claim, with one notable error.

4 years of sticking to that message

Biden has set many precedents related to organized labor.

In 2021, Biden encouraged workers at an Amazon facility in Alabama to vote in favor of joining a union. In a video message , he asserted that there should be “no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda” from employers toward unionizing efforts.

Although those workers chose not to join the union, this address marked a milestone. No president had ever issued such a statement on behalf of a union during an organizing campaign.

In 2022, Biden used executive orders to improve conditions for work on federal projects, including the use of project labor agreements for federal construction projects , which requires the hiring of unionized workers. His administration also created new rules around pay equity for federal workers .

And a Biden labor task force also released a report laying out 70 policies the government could implement to strengthen labor unions .

In 2023, he became the first president to walk a picket line , which happened during the most effective United Auto Workers strike in decades. The historical record indicates that no prior president had ever even considered taking such an action.

In 2024, the Biden administration has picked up the pace.

In the month of April alone, it banned the noncompete clauses that can stop workers from taking another job in their same line of work if they quit, expanded eligibility for overtime pay to people making up to US$58,656 a year, up from its current cap of $35,568, and pushed pension funds to only invest in companies that adhere to high labor standards.

Coordinated policy

Under the leadership of Biden’s appointees, the National Labor Relations Board – an independent agency charged with protecting workplace rights – has investigated allegations that Starbucks , the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and other companies have intimidated their employees to discourage unionization drives.

Biden also supports the Protecting the Right to Organize Act , better known as the PRO Act. Lawmakers have introduced this measure three times since 2019, and the House of Representatives has passed it twice.

Among other things, this bill would impose significant financial penalties on companies that illegally interfere with their employees’ union rights and would speed up the collective bargaining process after workers win a union election.

Public sentiment

Biden’s administration’s pro-union stance is in tune with public sentiment: Approval ratings for unions are higher than they’ve been in several decades.

About 7 in 10 Americans say they support unions , according to polls commissioned by Gallup and the AFL-CIO.

This public support might be buoyed by current events.

High-profile campaigns among workers employed by Amazon, Starbucks , show business studios , hospitals and automakers have kept unions in the news – regardless of what the White House is doing.

A wide array of workers, from strippers to UPS truck drivers , have made big gains in pay and benefits by flexing their collective power.

Teachers were already going on strike before the COVID-19 pandemic. They have continued to assert their right to do so around the country.

On the other hand …

To be sure, some of Biden’s aspirations to improve the lot of workers remain unfulfilled.

The share of U.S. workers who belong to unions has continued to fall, slipping to 10% in 2023 . The buying power of the federal minimum wage, stuck at $7.25 per hour since 2009, has been further eroded due to inflation.

Several states, meanwhile, have weakened their child labor laws even as the numbers of undocumented children and teens holding dangerous jobs that are off-limits for minors rise.

In terms of Biden’s actions, the low point came in 2022, when he used the Railway Labor Act of 1926 to stop the railroad union from striking for better sick leave. Biden officials argued that the economy could not afford a rail shutdown , but political considerations around inflation before the midterm elections probably contributed to the administration’s response.

At the same time, the Biden administration continued working behind the scenes to pressure rail companies to grant the workers their demands, and they largely did. Union leaders credit Biden for helping them get this victory for their workers .

Congress and the Supreme Court

There is only so much any president can do to promote labor rights. As with any other cause, they’re limited by the broader political climate and economic realities.

Given the generally weak track record of his predecessors going back to the late 1940s, I would argue that Biden is the most pro-union president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

FDR, however, had enormous majorities in Congress when he signed into law two measures that safeguard U.S. labor rights to this day: the National Labor Relations Act , which protects the right of private sector workers to organize unions without fear of retaliation, and the Fair Labor Standards Act , which established a minimum wage and made most child labor illegal.

Biden, in contrast, has had to contend with a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate throughout his presidency, and the Republicans gained a slim House majority in the 2022 midterm elections.

He’s also seeking to expand labor rights at a time when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been consistently ruling against unions .

To be sure, there are several significant labor cases that could potentially land on the Supreme Court’s docket. It will take time to see if unions become more powerful thanks to Biden’s actions and their own organizing, or whether the court continues to erode labor laws.

That’s because, historically, U.S. judges have had at least as much say in determining labor rights as presidents.

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Delaware's 'Tuition Incentive Program' aims to alleviate nurse shortages by offering financial support for CNA training and workforce development.

5 months ago

About Cris Barrish

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