SEPTEMBER 2, 2025 (Prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Teamsters\"](\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/downloads\/23454\/download\/Screenshot%202025-09-02%20at%209.03.34%E2%80%AFAM.png?cb=895004946532c9e84004b20a402a6654\")
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DAVID MCNEW\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teamsters participate in a Los Angeles May Day march on May 1, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article was produced by Capital & Main<\/a>, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. It is co-published here with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The current state <\/strong>of unions across the country is a study in contradiction. On one hand, public support for unions in the U.S. is at 70 percent<\/a>, just a tick off the highest mark in 60 years. Petitions for union elections filed with the National Labor Relations Board have more than doubled<\/a> in the last four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, the national membership numbers are down<\/a>. It\u2019s only a slight decrease, but it continues a long, steady decline. In 1983, the first year for which a comparable data set to today exists, the union membership rate among American workers was 20.1 percent. By 2024, it stood at 9.9 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a steep slide\u2014but there are outliers. California is one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last two decades, the Golden State\u2019s union numbers have held relatively steady, and they\u2019ve remained well above the national average. The state\u2019s unionization rate\u2014the percentage of all workers who are covered by a union contract, even if they\u2019re not members\u2014stands at 16.3 percent, more than five points higher than the national average, according to a new report<\/a> by labor researchers at multiple University of California campuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Related: A Federal Appellate Court Finds the NLRB to Be Unconstitutional<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn California, the union labor movement is pretty robust,\u201d said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the low-wage work program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and one of the authors of the report. \u201cIt\u2019s a testament to the continuing efforts of unions here to organize workers and to really get engaged in state-level policy to provide better opportunities for those workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is grinding work, and as the full effects of Trump 2.0 begin to be felt, union workers could be placed under new pressures and left with fewer allies. But union strategies in California may nevertheless point a way for other states to weather the approaching storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new report, <\/strong>produced primarily by the Berkeley center and UCLA\u2019s Institute for Research on Labor & Employment, puts the total of California workers covered by a union at 2.67 million, or about one in six workers. That\u2019s the largest raw total in the U.S., but seven states have a higher percentage of their workforce represented by unions: Hawaii, New York, Alaska, Washington, Connecticut, Oregon, and New Jersey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n California, though, is noteworthy for its steady union presence. It hasn\u2019t fluctuated much since 2005, despite the national decline. Further, the federal data set used to produce the union figures does not include home health care and child care workers who are classified as self-employed. In California, that takes in some 700,000 workers, even though their hourly wages are negotiated with individual counties through unions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n More from Mark Kreidler<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, the unionization count is almost certainly low. So what is California doing right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lopezlira pointed to a couple of areas. First, he said, major unions in California, including those in health care, education and public service, have aggressively and continuously worked to organize workers. The state\u2019s highest unionization rate is found in education, where more than a quarter of all workers are represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n California unions have also left a major mark on state labor policy in ways that benefit workers. The state\u2019s historic fast food wage<\/a> law was sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, as was a health care minimum wage<\/a>. Unions have also sponsored or worked on the kinds of statewide issues\u2014rent control, tenant protections\u2014that are critically important to hourly wage workers. (Disclosure: SEIU is a supporter of Capital & Main.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the totality of our report is about how hard these unions continue to work to organize and provide benefits to their workers,\u201d Lopezlira said. \u201cGiven all these headwinds\u2014housing, health care affordability, technology, AI\u2014the resiliency of California unions to look for innovative ways to help workers is critically important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those headwinds are incoming.<\/strong> In his second term in office, President Donald Trump has made no secret of his animosity toward unions. From his attempt to dismantle<\/a> the agency charged with protecting employees and enforcing labor laws to stripping the rights<\/a> of federal union workers, Trump\u2019s war on labor is readily apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a familiar tack. Organized labor\u2019s declining figures\u2014both in actual membership and the total number of workers who are represented by unions, even if they aren\u2019t members\u2014reflect decades of workplace rules and court decisions that have made it harder to unionize. They\u2019ve been falling since shortly after President Ronald Reagan fired 11,000 air traffic controllers<\/a> in 1981, a public-sector job action that nevertheless emboldened private employers to push back on unions more forcefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most recent federal labor data is from 2024, Lopezlira said, so the University of California report doesn\u2019t really account for anything enacted under Trump 2.0. \u201cBut the erosion of labor standards is a real concern\u2014and going after the institutions that are meant to protect those standards [like the National Labor Relations Board], that\u2019s an even bigger problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That may be all the more reason to look to the California approach. Union leaders in the state have pushed for years to strengthen worker protections and make it easier for workers to organize, and the high-profile wage laws in health care and fast food have reminded workers of the good their unions can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, roughly 60 million<\/a> workers in the U.S. wanted to join a union but couldn\u2019t in 2024. Recent organizing pushes at vehemently anti-union franchises like Starbucks<\/a> and REI<\/a>, meanwhile, suggest that the appetite for employee protections and fair wages is only growing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a bit hopeful,\u201d Lopezlira said. It may also be exactly what\u2019s needed, especially now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark Kreidler is a California-based writer and broadcaster, and the author of three books, including \u2018Four Days to Glory.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Organizing in the Golden State is holding strong, showing what\u2019s possible even as Trump 2.0 makes the fight harder. BY MARK KREIDLER SEPTEMBER 2, 2025 (Prospect.org) DAVID MCNEW\/GETTY IMAGES Teamsters participate in a Los Angeles May Day march on May 1, 2018. This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning… Continue reading
\n\n\n\nMARK KREIDLER<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n