The Rise and Fall of Unions in the United States

How the rights of workers have been treated, and why you should care.

Jared Beardsley

22 May 2024

Introduction

In the United States, members of the working class expect to work 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, be paid at least a mandated minimum wage, and be offered benefits in the form of healthcare coverage and/or retirement planning. We, as workers, expect reasonable hours, adequate pay, safe working conditions, and compensation due to injury or illness. As much as we contribute work towards a job, and that job in turn provides us with the means of survival. We take these benefits without thinking. Of course, we’ll be compensated fairly. Of course, we’ll only work a certain number of hours in a shift, with any additional work being compensated extra. Of course, we can take sick and maternity leave without endangering our employment status. We have rights after all, don’t we?

Well, not always. The rights of workers in the United States, despite being based on the same western Liberalism that founded this country, have never been secured so easily. The rights and freedoms we now enjoy so easily came at the cost of years of exploitation, with thousands of workers risking their jobs, and even their lives, for proper working conditions and compensation. Workers fought for suitable hours, adequate pay, and proper benefits for decades before they were granted. The benefits we enjoy without a second thought were not provided, they had to be fought for. So, who led the charge? 

Labor Unions have been a part of America’s history since its inception, with the first official union in the US being founded in 1794 (Pitta LLP, 2017). The first American worker strike predated the country itself, when in 1768 journeyman tailors in New York refused to work in protest of a wage reduction. Economic hardship from the lower classes, and the subsequent backlash, have consistently driven forth social progression in America. Progression through collective engagement and protest is the backbone of American social justice. For over a century, labor unions led that progression, bolstering a strong middle class, reducing income inequality, and raising the quality of life for millions of Americans. Given this advancement throughout history, we should expect a strong and unionized workforce with plentiful benefits, coupled with regular pay increases. Unions made up over 30% of the workforce in 1979, and had shown constant growth. Now, union workers are roughly 6% of the private workforce (Investopedia, 2024), with unionizing workers facing the threat of unemployment. Unions are demonized in the business world, viewed as ineffective organizations that slow job progression and waste valuable capital. Quite a dramatic shift! Why are the same organizations that achieved great strides for workers' rights viewed so negatively today? In this essay, I’m going to break down the rise and fall of unions in the United States, analyze who benefits (and suffers) from preventing unionization, and demonstrate why labor unions are essential to protect the rights of the working class.

Timeline of Unions in the United States 

Pre 1900s Workers Strikes

While labor Unions saw their largest boom during the FDR administration as a response to the great depression, workers strikes and union action during the 1800s set the stage for the greater success of future Unions. During the early stages of the industrial revolution, skilled artisans were replaced by factory labor rapidly. Trade unions had existed for over a century in the US, but they were limited to artisans of particular trades. Initially, this suited the economy, but union protection did not extend to the ever-growing population of factory workers. There were few laws to protect workers, who worked 12 hour days, six days a week, in dark and dangerous factories. Famously, children were employed in coal mines and factories as well, instead of going to school. While the first Union was founded in New York in 1794, the most famous and effective labor Union, the AFL, was founded in 1886 (StudentsofHistory, 2024). Workers organized to demand safer working conditions, higher wages, and an 8 hour workday. The AFL had the bargaining power of skilled workers, whose work often took years to learn and perfect. Unskilled workers struggled to form unions, because the uncomplicated nature of their work made them expendable to management. 

Along came the Knights of Labor, one of the first unions for skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers. Initially formed as a society of Tailors in 1869, it grew in size over the coming decades to be one of the largest and most effective labor unions for the working class. The Knights of Labor united quickly with railroad workers, increasing their membership by 600% between 1885 and 1886. The knights of labor organized several strikes with the railroad workers across America, including interstate railroad strikes in 1877 and 1886 (Britannica, 2024).

These strikes wouldn’t be taken peacefully. State governors deployed militia against both of the railroad strikes, refusing to cede to demands. This was indicative of a broad anti-union sentiment across the country. Strikes were threatened in two ways. Either workers were replaced (usually by underpaid immigrants), or strikebreakers, often consisting of state militia and US military forces, would break up the striking workers. Organizers of strikes faced unemployment and even imprisonment, depending on the violence of the strike itself.

Despite the challenges, over 37,000 strikes occurred in the US between 1881 and 1905, which brought the issue of industrial labor into the public eye, garnering popular support. Unions grew in number, and coupled with the antitrust acts passed at the turn of the century by Roosevelt’s administration, further driven forward by the Clayton Act by Woodrow Wilson, the right to strike and boycott was secured into law, giving workers more justification for collective action.

The 1930s Union Boom

The next major win for the workers came in the 1930s, with the passing of the National Labor Relations Act, Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Walsh Healey Public Contracts Act. These acts secured a federally mandated minimum wage,  extra pay for overtime work, child labor laws, and safer working conditions. These acts, in addition to FDR’s New Deal policies, strengthened the popularity and strength of labor unions (FDRLibrary, 2016).

These great steps forward for workers rights, made at a far more rapid pace than previous accomplishments, were driven by the massive labor shortage brought about by the great depression. The poor economic conditions drove many people towards labor unions, seeking both employment and protection in the tough time (Library of Congress, 2015). With unions growing in popularity, the federal government enacted several laws that strengthened their bargaining power, beginning a prosperous period of union strength that would continue for 4 decades. Following the great depression, union membership doubled nationwide, reaching roughly 1 million members.

1940s-1950s

As the United States entered World War 2, labor unions saw yet another surge in membership. The increased demand for manufacturing labor during wartime spurred greater union involvement. Here again we see the trend of increased demand for labor directly correlating with an increase in union involvement in order to protect their rights. Furthermore, unions expanded even more into the private labor sector, uniting a population that had lacked previous collective support. Despite a constant increase in union participation seen in this decade, and the growing popularity of the organizations among the American people, two pieces of legislation passed that would weaken unions’ power in the coming decades.

The first was the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The act was intended to prevent union coercion and restrict union action during national emergency, but instead weakened the power unions had within the working community. The act banned jurisdictional, political, wildcat, and solidarity strikes, as well as preventing public sector employees from striking at all during wartime. In addition to this, the act required that union members sign an affidavit rejecting communist alliance, which, considering the strong presence of socialist sympathizers that existed within the labor movement (and had for decades, mind you), took further power away from organizers. That being said, Taft-Hartley also increased employee autonomy both within and regarding a union, and restricted Unions to the same restrictions placed on companies under the Wagner act (NLRB, 2023).

The second law that would prove to destabilize Union support in America was the existence of right to work laws. The Taft-Hartley act allowed for the establishment of right to work laws, which allowed employees to be hired regardless of union status. At first, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this. After all, not everyone wants to join a union, so why should they be forced to? But right to work laws effectively stripped the bargaining power of Unions as they became more and more widespread. Under the NLRA, unions are obligated to represent every employee in a bargaining unit, regardless of whether they’re union members. The introduction of right to work laws carried this further, with workers being made more autonomous, union grievances now only represented members, but not all employees. These moves had two effects (NERB, 2024). First, union demands were now drastically limited, with union moves such as strikes being curtailed to only protest against one workplace at a time, bringing to end the period of industry wide strikes. Secondly, right to work laws made union demands far less compulsory for management, considering that unions now only appeared to represent members, rather than the entire workplace (BloombergLaw, 2024). The purpose of unions had historically been to represent workers in general, relying on collective action and the bargaining power of stopping production if necessary. Regardless of membership, unions still fought to increase wages and worker protection. With employers now even more free to hire and fire at will, employees under right to work laws were given a false sense of freedom, where they no longer had to participate in union activities. Over the next several decades, right to work laws would work to dismantle the bargaining ability of unions, despite unions continuing to grow in both size and popularity.

The 1980s Union Decline

Unions would see growth continuing after World War 2, bolstering worker unity and protection of their rights. Union membership would continue to grow until 1979, when the United States saw 21 million union members nationwide, roughly 31% of the total working population. The actions of the Reagan administration in the coming years would set forth a decline in membership that continued into the present day. 

Before the administration took office, the members of the NLRB tended to be governmental lawyers, thus ensuring legal compliance through professional insight. Reagan appointed individuals who’d spent their careers representing management, thus setting the stage for the NLRB to be less sympathetic to worker’s complaints. The board held that employers could question employees on any degree of union activity under a “totality of circumstances.” Previously, employees could only be questioned about union activity if the employer had a legitimate reason for questioning, and there was no threat of reprisal. Expanding this interrogation allowed workers to be threatened and coerced against unionization, or dismayed by management. Additionally, Our Way allowed ambiguous language to be used in order to forbid solicitation of unionization at work, preventing unions from forming during working hours. Finally, the loosened restrictions towards managers after the Reagan administration allowed for illegal interrogation of employees to take place, giving managers the ability to directly question union supporters regardless of relevance, and making employment decisions based on those questions (OnLabor, 2024).

In short, these breaks extended towards management placed the power back into the hands of the owners, making workers more fearful of the consequences of forming unions. Over the next 40 years, union membership declined as right to work laws expanded and Reagan’s policies took effect. 

Present Day Unionization

Today, unions are nearly an afterthought in the economy. Only 10% of workers total are in unions, with the private sector consisting of a measly 6% membership rate. 2023 saw the lowest rate of unionization in over 100 years. Studies conducted by Pew Research Center (Blazina, 2024) reflect that this is unpopular among Americans, with 59% of adults saying a decline in unions is bad for the working people, and 54% saying this was bad for the country as a whole. While this doesn’t appear to be a significant majority, this data is skewed by both age and political affiliation, with older generations or members of the republican party tending to be critical of any union involvement. 

Who wins (and loses) when unions decline?

Who Benefits?

In order to understand why unionization, a practice aimed at protecting the rights of workers, has been so heavily scrutinized, we must first analyze who benefits from a lack of unionization. The answer is simple: your employers. The 1980s provided a corporate cultural shift that valued maximizing shareholder value over employee benefits (Bruner, 2022) with wages seen now as a cost that can be minimized rather than the money an employee lives on. Employers do not wish to struggle with union demands, or increase employee say in what occurs in the workplace (Kelly, 2020). With unions out of the way, employers are free to run a company in the way that is most economically rewarding, rather than what ensures the livelihood of the workers. To be abundantly clear, unions grant more power to workers in the workplace, allowing them to make demands for wages, better conditions, and employee involvement. This power has to be taken from management. Employers oppose unions because it strips them of the power they currently enjoy.

Who Suffers?

So, who suffers from this arrangement. Well I didn’t want to be the one to break it to you, especially like this, but it’s you. You, my dear reader, are the one who suffers from a decrease in unionization. To properly illustrate why this is the case, let’s examine some of the benefits unions bring to the workers affected. 

The most significant, and obvious, benefit that unions bring to workers is higher wages. On average, union workers are paid 18% more than nonunion workers (Staff, 2023). When controlling for education, occupation, and experience, union workers made at least 10.2% more (EPI, 2021). This clearly shows that unions will increase wages, regardless of industry or experience. Furthermore, unions greatly decrease wage gaps related to race and gender, reducing competition within the workplace. In addition to higher pay, union workers also have greater access to employer sponsored benefits. Today, over 90% of union members have access to employer sponsored healthcare, compared to 68% of nonunion workers. Also, union members tend to have earlier retirements, more vacation days, holidays, and sick pay. Unions also make the workplace safer, increasing safety requirements and reducing workplace accidents. To illustrate this same point backwards, right-to-work legislation was directly correlated to a 14% increase in occupational fatalities. Unions make jobs safer, more lucrative, and easier to attend, with no lasting negative effects towards company market share (EPI, 2021). Finally, unions work to decrease income inequality nationwide. During the heyday of unions in the United States, the income gap between the richest and poorest americans shrunk considerably, not because the rich got poorer, but because the poor got richer. As unions decreased, this gap widened, with research indicating that $50 trillion migrated into the coffers of the top 1% (Bruner, 2022). Unions elevate the wages of workers and bolster the working class, and by reducing power to unions, income inequality skyrocketed

But what if I don't join a union? That’s such a wonderful question my dear reader. You don’t have to! Studies show that wages for nonunion employees also increases with high union concentration, as employers actively compete to retain their employees. States with high union concentrations have wages 19% above the national average, and 40% higher than low union density states (EPI, 2021). Unions raise wages across the board, not just for their members, spreading benefits among the entire working class regardless of who participates. This only further illustrates the point that unions are essential in protecting the wages of the working citizen, and reducing the national income inequality.

Closing Thoughts

American approval of unions is the highest it’s been since 1965, with over 68% of Americans viewing labor unions as a positive presence in the economy (Brenan, 2021). With all the evidence I’ve presented so far, it’s not hard to see why. Unions increase wages, benefits, and employee participation in the company, with these benefits spilling over into non-union workplaces purely due to geographical proximity. Unions have led the charge for all the benefits we take for granted, benefits that we would not enjoy had it not been for their involvement. The decline of unions is to the direct detriment of the American people, as it will only cause the stagnation of wages, the increase of income inequality, and undervaluing of the employee. With the introduction of right to work laws, employees were given the false sense of freedom that they could control their working conditions, but this could not be further from the truth. With no collective engagement in the workplace, employees combat each other for wages, and wages can be placed in accordance to market demand, not to the need of the employee. Those who oppose unions want workers to compete with each other for promotions, raises, and wages. Unions ensure that workers can unite to bring these benefits to the greater working populace. When workers make more, disposable spending increases, and the broader economy is lifted. Increasing unionization is better for all workers in America, regardless of what your boss tells you. It’s simple. Unions grant workers more power in the workplace, with their finances, and everyday life. Those that oppose unions oppose your livelihood. Don’t believe the contrary.