Despite tough climate for organizing, unions notched gains in 2025

February 27, 2026 by

The number of American workers represented by unions grew to 16.5 million in 2025, its highest point in 16 years. Still, the gap between the share of workers who say they want a union and the share of workers with one remained stubbornly high.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union members in the workforce last month. It showed modest growth for unions both nationwide and in Minnesota, where 15.8% of workers were represented by unions in 2025, an increase of 1%.

Nationally, the rate of union representation increased by one-tenth of a point, to 11.2%. The total number of workers represented by unions grew by 463,000.

Labor leaders said the data underscores how difficult it remains to organize unions under current labor law. They pointed to the tension between current union density and recent survey data showing near-record highs in unions’ approval ratings.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, the nation’s highest-ranking union officer, said the increase in unionization last year reflects years of sustained effort among workers to organize and win elections – a lengthy process that is met with hostility in most workplaces.

“Billionaire bosses and union-busting politicians have tried to throw the kitchen sink at working people and their unions – slashing our jobs and rigging the rules to scare us out of organizing – but they are failing,” Shuler said in a response to the report.

Shuler took aim at the Trump administration for modeling an anti-union approach since the start of its second term, with mass layoffs and executive orders that have attempted to strip federal workers of their collective bargaining agreements.

She also noted that the government shutdown put a pause on National Labor Relations Board elections, further delaying the organizing process for thousands of workers.

“Workers have felt President Trump’s billionaire-first agenda in action and are hungry to take back their power,” Shuler said. “Workers know that the best check on a bad boss is a strong union contract. In 2026, workers will continue to organize in every corner of the country and build power to fight for the lives they deserve.”

Notable takeaways from the BLS report include:

• Signs of growth in the South, after a sustained push to organize in so-called “right to work” states. Nearly half of all union growth last year came from Southern states, with younger workers organizing at a rapid pace, too.

• Public workers are looking to unions, especially at the federal level. Union density among federal workers grew to over 31% – the largest single-year increase since 2011. Overall, the number of public-sector workers represented by a union grew by 236,000, or 36.4% of that workforce.

• Private-sector workers made organizing gains in health care, retail, education services and construction. North America’s Building Trades Unions reported gaining 4 over 47,000 new members across 14 crafts last year, despite widespread industry disruption. NABTU President Sean McGarvey cited “sound public policy,” in part, for the unions’ growth.

“The prior administration and Congress prioritized real investments in infrastructure and energy…” McGarvey said. “While the current administration has announced future foreign investments in the U.S., none have yet produced a single work hour for our members.

“Instead, cancellations, delays, withdrawn permits, withheld funds and policy uncertainty have jeopardized these anticipated domestic investments.”

• The number of Minnesota workers represented by unions increased from 394,000 to 431,000 last year. The state ranked 10th-highest for share of the workforce with union representation.

• Union members continued to out-earn their non-union peers. The median weekly earnings for all workers last year was $1,204. Union members had median weekly earnings of $1,487; for non-union workers the median was $1,174.

– Michael Moore, UA editor

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MN unions grew in 2021, bucking national trend

January 21, 2022 by

Minnesota bucked the national trend of declining union membership last year, as the state’s union rolls grew by 18,000 workers.

“Working people across Minnesota stood up in 2021 and demanded a voice on the job, better pay and benefits, and safer workplaces,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy said in response to the annual U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report on union membership, released yesterday.

Minnesota has seen a flurry of successful union drives over the last two years, bringing workers at hospitals and clinics, nonprofits, craft breweries and distilleries, bookstores and elsewhere into the labor movement.

The BLS data also underscores the union advantage, McCarthy said. A union contract raises wages by roughly 20% and overall compensation by about 28%, on average, making union jobs more attractive to workers at a time when many are reevaluating their career paths.

“Through a combination of workers organizing unions at their workplace and others flocking to union jobs, it’s clear that more Minnesotans understand that by speaking up together, they can truly earn a fair return on their work,” he said.

Union members made up 16% of Minnesota’s workforce in 2021, up from 15.8% in 2020. It was the second consecutive year in which Minnesota’s union density rose.

Nationally, union membership declined by 241,000 last year, to a total of about 14 million workers. Union density fell to 10.3% of the workforce.

The decline came despite a wave of collective action among workers, both union and non-union, for better wages and working conditions in 2021.

Public support for unions, too, is at its highest point in decades. A 2021 Gallup poll found 68% of Americans support organized labor, including 77% of young people. An MIT study found that 60 million Americans would join a labor union if they could.

Something doesn’t add up, union leaders said.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler pointed the finger at federal labor laws, written nearly a century ago, that do little to deter employers from illegally intimidating or retaliating against workers who try to form unions. In a statement reacting to the new data, Shuler said the laws “are designed to make joining a union as difficult as possible.”

“Across this country, workers are organizing for a voice on the job and millions of Americans are standing in solidarity with union members on strike,” Shuler added. “If everyone who wanted to join a union was able to do so, membership would skyrocket.”

“As we work to rebuild economy and seek justice for working people, the Biden administration and Congress must institute policies – such as the PRO Act, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act and other legislation to expand Americans’ freedom to join together in unions,” said McCarthy, Minnesota’s highest-ranking union officer.

Meanwhile, the BLS report showed promising data for communities of color. Black workers continued to have the highest unionization rate in 2021, with 12.9% membership. According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, Black union workers are paid 13.7% more than their non-union peers.

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Minnesota gained 46,000 union members last year, reversing decade-long decline

January 19, 2018 by

Working people’s voice grew stronger last year in Minnesota, where organizing gains pushed union membership to its highest point since 2004, according to federal data released today.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual report on union membership shows Minnesota gained 46,000 union members from 2016 to 2017, the largest year-to-year gain since 2000. The state’s union population, 411,000, was at its highest since 2004.

Union members grew as a share of Minnesota’s total workforce as well. Union density increased from 14.2 percent to 15.2 percent in 2017, its highest point since 2010.

The report shows Minnesota unions are reversing a trend of decline that began over a decade ago.

“These numbers show that despite political threats from Washington, more working Minnesotans are exercising their freedom to join together in unions to negotiate for a better life,” said Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation.

Driving the uptick in union membership are organizing gains Minnesota unions have made recently on several fronts, including the service sector, retail and higher education. Some highlights include:

• More than 500 retail janitors, after a six-year campaign with the Twin Cities worker center CTUL, won their first union contract last February.

• Retail workers at three Minneapolis co-ops – Seward, Eastside and Linden Hills – voted to unionize in 2017, as did workers at Whole Foods Co-Op in Duluth.

• The Mayo Clinic’s move to outsource food-service work in 2016 sparked a flurry of organizing activity in Rochester. Some 250 workers have formed four separate bargaining units with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, which went from representing about 50 percent of Mayo’s food service staff to representing all of them.

• Adjunct faculty members at colleges and universities nationwide are forming unions to push back against a higher-ed model they consider unsustainable. In Minnesota, SEIU Local 284 helped adjunct faculty at Augsburg and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design organize in late 2016.

The BLS report also reflects renewed emphasis Minnesota’s public sector unions are putting on membership. With the U.S. Supreme Court likely to rule so-called “fair share” fees unconstitutional later this year, teachers and other public-service workers are scrambling to shore up support among their co-workers.

AFSCME Council 5, which represents over 40,000 public-service workers statewide, converted thousands of “fee payers” into full-fledged members last year, on top of organizing new units at seven different employers, bringing 225 new members into the fold.

Of course, an increase in union power isn’t just good for union members. “It’s no coincidence that as union membership increased in 2017, so did Minnesotans’ average wages,” McCarthy said. “Union workers set standards for wages and safety that benefit all working people.”

Nationally, the number of union members rose by 260,000 to 14.8 million. Union density remained unchanged at 10.7 percent.

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Unions gaining public favor, losing ground in workplace

March 7, 2017 by

Union members are becoming increasingly scarce in the U.S. labor force. It’s a trend that continued in 2016, when union density fell from 11.1 to 10.7 percent of the total workforce, according to federal report issued in January.

Unions’ demise has assumed an aura of inevitability. So when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on unions, media outlets mostly yawned. The headline – “Union membership dips to lowest point in recent history” – showed up in the cable-news crawl, as a one-off tweet or buried inside the Business section.

Four days later the nonpartisan Pew Research Center released results of a different survey, showing more Americans – roughly six in 10 adults – view unions favorably than at any time in the last 15 years. Young people, in particular, hold favorable views of unions – three-quarters of those ages 18 to 29, according to the Pew report.

How can union membership be declining while unions’ popularity is surging? Why aren’t more people forming unions?

Labor experts and union organizers say the seemingly contradictory trends illuminate just how challenging the process of organizing unions is, particularly in an economy that looks little like it did when U.S. labor laws were drafted 80 years ago. But experts also say the numbers don’t reflect non-traditional organizing campaigns that have picked up in recent years, many of which are yielding improvements for working people and, more broadly, helping the labor movement stay relevant.

“I feel like we’re at a moment of pretty dramatic change where there needs to be a different model, a different way of doing things,” Monica Bielski Boris, director of the University of Minnesota’s Labor Education Service, said. “Unions were a pretty important part of changes that led to our current (labor laws) in the 1930s, and I’m hopeful they will also be an important part of that happening again.”

People like unions!

Pew’s survey results, which showed a remarkable, 12-point uptick in unions’ favorable rating in less than two years, don’t surprise Cat Salonek, who has worked 10 years as a union organizer, now locally with the Communications Workers of America and the Newspaper Guild.

Being slighted or disrespected at work, she said, is a near-universal experience among working people, and most of the time they feel powerless to do anything about it. Unions appeal as a way to take power back from their bosses.

“The No. 1 reason people want to form a union is dignity and respect in the workplace,” Salonek said. “You might think it would be pay – and it’s a close second – but the No. 1 reason is they’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. Most people really want a union because they’re being treated so badly.”

The petty grievances have a way of adding up, Salonek explained. One group of workers reached out to her after management, responding to their repeated requests for a water cooler, finally gave in, but refused to provide cups. Another group decided to organize after their boss removed the break-room table. “They were so outraged they drew a chalk outline on the carpet of the floor where the table used to be,” she said.

Retail and health care workers approach St. Paul-based United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1189 with concerns about unpredictable schedules and paid time off, organizing director Abraham Wangnoo said. “People with young families want to be able to see their kids’ sporting events, to plan their lives.”

That’s not to say rising income inequality and corporate power aren’t behind renewed interest in unions, too. Young workers were particularly “drawn into that analysis of corporate power and wealth” put forth by Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, Bielski Boris said. “Unions were seen as part of a solution to deal with those problems.”

“They realize not every person is going to be the CEO of a company,” Wangnoo said of young workers. “They have to stick together.”

Pro-union Jimmy John’s workers picketed outside a Minneapolis store in 2011. (file photo)

Broken system

Perception isn’t the problem unions face, organizers and experts say. A broken system is.

In 2011, after their repeated requests for paid sick days fell on deaf ears, workers at several Jimmy John’s sub shops in the Twin Cities decided to unionize. Their scrappy, upstart effort drew enough support to prompt the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an historic union election in the union-free world of fast food.

The franchisee, MikLin Enterprises, responded with a campaign intended to scare its 170 employees from supporting the union. MikLin fired six workers active in the campaign, a move that sapped momentum from the organizing drive. Workers voted 87-85 against a union.

The six workers filed complaints with the NLRB, arguing MikLin had fired them in retaliation for exercising their legally protected right to engage in union activity. One year later, an administrative law judge sided with the workers, but MikLin filed the first of a series of appeals that ended, finally, five years after the organizing election, when a federal appeals court ordered the six workers reinstated to their former jobs.

But by that time, as documented in a Huffington Post report, all six workers had long since moved on to new careers, from computer programming to teaching. The idea of going back to fast-food work was laughable, but it laid bare the challenge working people face when they organize a union.

“Not only is the process very cumbersome, the penalty for employers who engage in bad behavior during an election, including firing people, has never been very real,” Bielski Boris said.

What happens after an employer gets wind of union organizing in their shop?

“They hold one-on-one intimidation sessions, use coworkers to apply pressure, spread misinformation about strikes, about dues,” Wangnoo said. “It is hard to imagine, to understand the pressure it puts on somebody who has kids and a life they want to live and bills they have to pay. It’s terrifying.”

Dwindling resources

Unions’ high favorability rating is playing out in NLRB elections nationwide, which unions won at a rate of about 70 percent from Oct. 1, 2015, through December 2016. But the very number of organizing elections taking place – just over 100 per month across the country during that span – illustrates how hard it is for workers to rally enough support to call for a vote. (Most organizing elections are held by the NLRB, but not all. Public-sector elections in Minnesota, for example, are conducted by the Bureau of Mediation Services.)

Monica Bielski Boris (L), shown speaking at a press conference last year, holds a PhD in industrial relations. (file photo)

Employers’ sophisticated, anti-union campaigns are one reason organizing drives don’t often reach the threshold for an NLRB election. Another, Bielski Boris said, is the level of resources it takes to conduct an organizing drive – resources unions are finding increasingly scarce.

Outsourcing and automation, Bielski Boris said, have decimated sectors of the economy, namely manufacturing, rich with union density. Shrinking membership, combined with anti-worker “Right to Work” laws, have forced many unions to choose between responding to workers who want to organize and providing service to existing members.

“It’s incredibly expensive for unions to organize,” Bielski Boris said. “The process is so arduous that even unions who want to organize have some trepidation.”

A changing economy, a new organizing model

Ironically, while working people crave the stability and security a union contract provides, the economic forces at play in destabilizing the workplace are, themselves, barriers to organizing unions.

As more workers settle for short-term gigs – think Uber and Lyft – rather than work in traditional shops, many find themselves labeled as independent contractors rather than employees. And labor law says working people must share a common employer in order to join together in a union.

Salonek, who works with language interpreters and ESL teachers, said independent contractor status “voids those workers from NLRA rights.” If they want to unionize, they must first get reclassified as employees, “and then the employer knows you want a union before you even start an organizing campaign.”

In response, CWA and other unions are exploring alternative union structures that reflect the way working people built power before the NLRA, Salonek said, including professional associations and guilds that advocate for workers in a specific industry. The throwback model comes with several challenges, though. Laws that prohibit price fixing prevent workers’ associations from setting wage floors, for example.

Unions also are exploring new benefits to membership that might attract independent contractors, freelancers and, in Right to Work states, dues payers. They include health insurance plans for workers who bounce from gig to gig, malpractice insurance, professional development and more.

Building Trades unions offer a glimpse of how unions might enhance their appeal to “gig-economy” workers. “You belong to a union and it helps you train for employment and connect with employers, and it sets some baseline standards in the industry,” Bielski Boris said. “They offer a model where transitional employment is built into the DNA of how they operate.”

Reports of unions’ demise as a share of the workforce also fail to reflect successful organizing taking place outside of traditional collective bargaining, including the Fight for 15 and expansion of worker centers.

In the Twin Cities, the worker center CTUL has given retail janitors and fast-food workers a collective voice on the job. Last year, CTUL’s organizing effort resulted in a new union of workers in an industry – retail cleaning – rife with wage theft, as temp agencies and subcontractors cut corners to provide big-box chains with the lowest bid.

The historic victory provides a glimmer of hope for Bielski Boris that unions might restore more than their Pew survey numbers.

“This is an opportunity to figure out what’s possible for labor,” she said. “If working people can see the value unions play in challenging the system, there’s some hope. But if we allow grief to take hold, we’re most certainly going to end up with the results we fear most.”

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Holding steady in Minnesota, union density plunges in Right-to-Work Wisconsin

January 28, 2016 by

BLS LogoUnion members made up 14.2 percent of Minnesota’s wage-earning and salaried workforce last year, a membership rate unchanged from 2014, according to an annual report released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A similar trend played out nationwide, as the union membership rate held steady at 11.1 percent of the U.S. workforce.

But the story was much different in Wisconsin, where total union membership dropped to 223,000 last year, down 83,000 from 2014. Union members made up just 8.3 percent of the workforce in 2015, down from 11.7 percent in 2014.

In 2009, the year before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took office, Wisconsin had 385,000 union members, accounting for 15.2 percent of the state’s workforce.

Since taking office, Walker has teamed up with Republican majorities in the Legislature to pass a Right to Work law and Act 10, which included draconian restrictions on public-sector workers’ union rights, including a provision that requires local unions to hold annual recertification elections.

Both measures substantially weakened unions’ bargaining power and likely contributed to a 45-percent drop in union density statewide over the last six years.

“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Minnesota has … a higher unionization rate, higher median income and a better workplace safety record than any of our neighbors,” said Bill McCarthy, president of the state’s largest labor federation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO. “Higher union density means a higher standard of living for all working people.”

Meanwhile, the wage advantage enjoyed by union members nationwide remained strong in 2015. Median weekly earnings among union members who worked full time last year were $980, compared to $776 for non-union workers.

The advantage was even greater among some minority groups. Black union members, for example, earned 30 percent more than black non-union workers. And Hispanic women union members earned 44 percent more than their non-union peers.

Union membership continued to pay off in certain industries as well, most notably in construction, where union members’ median weekly earnings were $356 more than non-union workers.

The BLS reported Minnesota had a total of 363,000 union members in 2015, but unions represented an additional 22,000 workers. This group includes so-called “fee payers,” who elect not to pay union dues but are covered by the benefits of a union contract.

In Minnesota, fee-payers account for 5.7 percent of workers who benefit from collective bargaining agreements. In Right-to-Work Wisconsin, where unions are barred from charging fair-share fees, that ratio jumps to 11.9 percent.

Public-sector unions’ ability to collect fair-share fees is under scrutiny by the Supreme Court in Friedrichs v. CTA. Many experts expect the court’s ruling, expected before the end of June, to establish Right to Work across the public sector in all 50 states.

The BLS generates its annual report on union membership using results of the Current Population Survey, a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households nationwide. BLS data was released the same day that Gallup ranked Minnesota with the highest job creation index in the nation.

“As we continue to lead the nation in job creation, Minnesota’s labor movement is committed to ensuring these new jobs are family-sustaining jobs,” McCarthy said.

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Unions’ organizing gains outpaced by overall job growth in 2014

January 23, 2015 by

BLS LogoThe percentage of workers who are members of labor unions dropped slightly in 2014 both nationally and in Minnesota, while the earnings advantage enjoyed by union members remained significant, according to an annual report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The report, released today, found the number of union members nationwide last year was about 14.6 million, or 11.1 percent of the workforce. Total membership changed little from 2013, but the union membership rate fell from 11.3 percent.

Minnesota continues to have greater union density than the country as a whole. About 360,000 Minnesota workers, 14.2 percent of the state’s workforce, are members of unions, and 20,000 more are represented by unions but opt out of paying dues.

In 2013, Minnesota had 362,000 union members, making up 14.3 percent of the state’s workforce.

Meanwhile, the BLS report confirmed that collective bargaining continues to be an effective tool for raising wages.

Median weekly earnings for nonunion workers nationwide last year were $763, compared to $970 for union workers. In other words, non-union workers earned just 79 percent of what union workers earned in 2014.

The advantage remains particularly significant for union women. According to an analysis of the BLS report by the National Women’s Law Center, the gap between what women and their male counterparts earn for doing the same job is smaller among union members (about 11 cents) than non-union workers (18 cents).

The union advantage held up across most sectors of the economy. Median weekly earnings among hospitality workers ($500 non-union to $636 union), transportation and utility workers ($785 to $1,011), service sector workers ($482 to $762) and public sector workers ($850 to $1,014) showed a significant union advantage.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the report was not all bad news. The nation’s top labor leader pointed to major organizing wins in the private sector, where union membership grew by 41,000, or 0.6 percent, from 2013 to 2014. Most notably, 14,500 American Airlines workers voted to join the Communications Workers of America last year.

Organizing gains were outpaced, however, by the increase in overall employment, as the economy continued to add jobs in its recovery from the Great Recession. As a result, the share of union members in the workforce fell.

Here’s Trumka’s statement, released today, in response to the BLS report:

Today’s release of the annual union membership numbers by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in this economic recovery, people are either seeking out good union jobs or taking matters into their own hands by forming unions to raise wages and ensure that new jobs are good jobs.

In 2014, workers made great strides and confronted great challenges, including major organizing wins at American Airlines, multiple state legislative victories on the minimum wage and innovative campaigns conducted by carwash workers, among others. We recognize, however, that right-wing billionaires’ extremist politics, a rapacious Wall Street and insufficient advocacy from political leaders thwarted further progress.

In the State of the Union this week, President Obama celebrated the fact that our economy has benefited from 58 consecutive months of job growth and reiterated the need for laws that strengthen unions and give workers a voice. But the most important question is not simply how many jobs we’re creating, but are we creating jobs that raise wages for all? A strong recovery must be built on family-sustaining, not poverty-level jobs. Today’s news confirms what most of us already knew: workers are finding good union jobs despite political ideologues — and jobs are coming back as the economy slowly rebounds, but neither are nearly enough.

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