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In 1983, just over 20 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Now, 35 years later, that number has been cut in half to just about 10 percent. But there are new signs of life for unions.
Just in the past two weeks, employees at Slate, Vox, and The Los Angeles Times have all voted to unionize. Those votes follow a trend of workplaces in journalism and at universities successfully organizing in the past few years. In total, white collar fields like entertainment, law, and journalism have seen increases in union workers, up about four percent since 2010, as reported in a recent piece in The Atlantic.
But things are playing out differently in lower wage industries, like production and manufacturing, where the percentage of union workers has fallen by about three percent since 2010.
One high profile bid to unionize came at a Nissan plant in Mississippi over the summer — that vote failed, as did another vote by 7,500 Boeing employees in South Carolina last February.
So what’s behind the success of white collar unionization efforts, and the failure in lower wage industries? And what does it say about the state of the divided American economy? Ruth Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and she discusses the divergent trends in union efforts.
Disclosure: A number employees of The Takeaway, including interim Host Todd Zwillich, are members of a union, the Screen Actors Guild.
This segment is hosted by Todd Zwillich
