Don't mourn. . . . As Membership Keeps Sliding, How Can We Organize Our Way Out?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual report on U.S. union membership has, for years, sounded like a broken record: decline, decline, decline. After a pleasant break in 2005, when gains in new membership for once kept steady with the loss of union jobs, was short-lived, according to this year’s report.
In 2006, union membership dropped from 12.5 percent of the total workforce to a little over 12 percent. The private sector fared even more dismally, dropping down to only 7.4 percent membership (from 7.8 percent in 2005).
It’s common wisdom among many union leaders that it will take massive and sustained organizing to get out of this rut. How to organize on the scale necessary to reverse this decline, however, remains a topic of hot debate.
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Are highly centralized, industrially focused organizing campaigns the answer? Can labor law reform shift the balance of power from bosses to workers? Can unions effectively marshal hundreds or thousands of rank-and-file organizers to lead large-scale campaigns?
Labor Notes will be opening up its pages over the next months in a roundtable series to provide a space for labor activists to hash out these questions—and hopefully come up with a few new ones, or even some answers. Please send your articles, ideas, and questions to us as we proceed.
For our series kick-off we feature stories by Chris Townsend and Wendy Thompson, and some additions online, including our past exchanges on the subject.
