What Is The Cause Or Factors Behind The Recent Decline Of Union Membership



Abstract

This paper examines the decline in labor unions memberships. Unions are vital because they can decrease income disparity and are the prime promoters for policies that benefit workers and the poor. But union membership has experienced a unadorned drop with reductions from about 35% of the non-agricultural labor force in 1954 to less than 10% today. The significant literature on union decline has predominantly focused on how extensive economic shifts, amplified employer resistance, and inadequacies in union organizing strategies weaken controlled labor. But the state controls union organizing. Astonishingly few researchers inspect the politics of labor's decline. I extend the union decline study by highlighting how political measures and economic downturn matter for labor outcomes in separate but related analyses.

Table of Contents

Abstractii

Introduction1

Why Unions Matter1

Discussion1

Substantial Profits1

Workplace Shelters:2

Causes of Union Membership Decline2

Economic Downturn3

Employer Resistance3

Ineffective Union Strategies4

Conclusion6

References7

What Is The Cause Or Factors Behind The Recent Decline Of Union Membership

Introduction

Why Unions Matter

Unions are among the strongest advocates for American workers. In the nineteenth century, union protests influenced the institution of a shortened workday. And in the early 1900s, organized labor lobbied for child labor restrictions, and workers' compensation. In subsequent years, unions endorsed other worker friendly legislation such as minimum wage laws, and unemployment insurance. More recently, labor unions actively supported the passage of the Family Medical Leave Act. Such legislative landmarks broadly benefit workers. Labor scholars have especially emphasized unions' influence on income inequality, their capacity to give voice to employee concerns, and their pursuit of legislation that benefits workers and the poor. In what follows, I discuss some of labor unions' most salient contributions.

Discussion

Substantial Profits

Labor unions reduce income inequality. Through the 1960s and 1970s, most analysts believed that unions generated income inequality. Friedman (1962: 124) argued that “Since unions have generally been strongest among groups that would have been high-paid anyway, their effect has been to make high-paid workers higher paid at the expense of lower paid workers”. But research in the 1980s and subsequent more sophisticated analyses show that unions' net effect is to reduce income inequality review research on unions and income distribution. They find that the beneficial union influence on earnings distributions holds up rather well across time. Studies that use different models and investigate different types of workers find the same relationship between union strength and inequality. But union membership has drastically declined in recent decades. And this trend is associated with a substantial increase in wage inequality at least since the late 1970s (Freeman 1992, 1996; But, as union strength has declined, their capacity to maintain these benefits is diminished.

Workplace Shelters:

Organized labor has been a key factor in securing important workplace legislation. For example, labor organizations lobbied strongly for the passage of The 1970 Occupational Health and Safety Act. Unions help ensure that employers abide by labor legislation. This is largely done through unions' capacity to educate employees about their rights and through dispute mediation (Hirsch, DuMond, and Macpherson 1997; ...