Union membership as a percentage of the workforce
Yep that's the right metric, even if absolute numbers are up in relative terms to the working population it's still incredibly low.
The nerds call it union density and its been trending down for decades, unfortunately.
Both numbers are important, as "total union membership rising/falling" is useful to know if efforts to expand membership have been successful.
If a sudden rash of unemployment in an unorganized sector of the economy caused the total unionized percentage to surge, I wouldn't consider that a good thing. The ideological cause of unionization isn't inherently served by arbitrary fluctuations in the overall employment pool. Now, if Microsoft lays off 10% of its workforce and there's a sudden rush towards labor organizing as a response, sure... but I haven't seen that happening.
I'm actually surprised to see this given how much attention major unions have gotten in the media over the past couple of years
The popular pseudo-left claim that Unions were having "their moment" under Biden would be analogous to claiming the Palestinian rights movement was having their "moment" during the past year
As always, context reigns supreme
Look I'm giving no credit to the president and strikebreaker in chief lol I'm just saying I have heard a lot from Starbucks, Amazon, and other smaller places, it just surprises me that even with that there is still a loss of union jobs. I guess every moment you're not hearing about it is when the backsliding is happening
Look I'm giving no credit to the president and strikebreaker in chief lol
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were doing that, I was just outlining the most common liberal rhetorical strategy when it comes to unions since 2020
I think in a lot of those cases it is unionized trying to make a union and not always succeeding, so they wouldn't be counted among the numbers of unionized workers. The ones that do succeed compromise hundreds, maybe a few thousand people, which is not a large part of the work force.
The popular pseudo-left claim that Unions were having "their moment"
More a consequence of existing unions successfully bargaining for better wages/working conditions, and a few early organizing successes (Starbucks, Amazon), than a universal rise in union membership. It had far less to do with Biden than liberals would like you to believe. The post-COVID labor pool compression has offered organizers more leverage than they've enjoyed in my lifetime.
But Unions are so emaciated after decades of evisceration that overall shifts in the employment pool don't significantly affect their membership.
It is surprising if you haven't been keeping up on the details (and not everyone can, obviously). The media, including social media, presented the last 4 years as being a revitalization of union power after like 40-50 years of decline.
The reality is while there has more discussion in the media about unions and what unions can do for workers, and support for unionizing has broadly seemingly been on a popular rise, this has not been translated into workers actually unionizing.
I know people will have a tendency to cope over this stuff, me included of course, and reason internally like "ah, well, gotta start somewhere" and "as younger generations begin working and move up to more experienced working positions, the workplaces might unionize!" Maybe. Maybe they will. Then again, maybe Trump gets a thinly veiled law (called "pro workers act for raising wages of unionizing bargaining workers who want wages bill act law") passed to effectively make unionizing, collective bargaining, illegal. Which one right now seems more likely? Yeah...
what about the many hot union summers and building the may 1st general strikes I keep hearing about
thank u for informing me with this post comrade
