Unions: 10% of US Workers, 1% of Farm Workers

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April 7, 2023

The share of US workers who were union members fell to 10 percent in 2022, down from 20 percent in 1983. The wage and salary workforce rose by 50 percent between 1983 and 2022 while the number of union members fell by 20 percent.

The W&S workforce rose 50%, and union membership fell 20%, 1983-2022

A third of public sector workers are union members, compared with six percent of private sector workers. Two states, HI and NY, have more than 20 percent of workers who are union members. A third of the 14 million US union members live in two states, CA with 2.6 million and NY with 1.7 million.

Union membership is also falling in other countries. In Australia, 12 percent of workers are union members, including eight percent of private sector workers, down from over 50 percent in the early 1980s. Some US states and Britain, Canada, India and Japan allow closed shop or agency shop arrangements, which means that employers and unions can sign agreements that require all employees to be union members or to pay most union dues. US right-to-work states do not allow such agreements; Michigan repealed its right-to-work in March 2023.

US. There were 142 million US wage and salary workers in 2022, and 14 million were union members, including seven million union members in the public sector and seven million in the private sector. About two million workers are represented by unions but are not union members.

14 million union members in 2022 were 10 percent of the 142 million W&S employees

The highest unionization rate, the share of union members to employment in a sector, is in public protective service occupations such as police and fire as well as education, where a third of employees are union members. The highest unionization rates in the private sector are in utilities, where 20 percent of employees are union members, motion pictures, 17 percent, and transportation, 14 percent. Less than two percent of employees in finance and insurance, food service, and agriculture are union members.

Union members earn more than non-union members, an average $1,200 a week in 2022 versus $1,000 a week for non-union members.

Union members earned $200 a week more than non-union members in 2022

Agriculture. BLS data on union membership are from the Current Population Survey, which found that average wage and salary employment in farming occupations was 910,000 in 2022, including 39,000 union members and 43,000 workers represented by unions. CPS reported an average 1.3 million workers employed in the agricultural industry in 2022, including 48,000 were union members and 54,000 workers represented by unions. CPS samples of farm workers are small.

CPS samples of farm workers are small, and the CPS did not report median weekly wages for union workers in farming occupations or the agricultural industry, but nonunion workers in farming occupations earned a median $645 a week in 2022 and $710 a week in the agricultural industry.

CPS data found less than 50,000 union members in US agriculture in 2022

UFW. The United Farm Workers union launched by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in 1962 is the best known farm worker union. The UFW won a 40 percent wage increase in its first grape contract in 1966, mounted a consumer boycott of table grapes in the late 1960s that persuaded a seventh of Americans to avoid table grapes, and spearheaded the most pro-union labor law in the US, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975.

The UFW receives more financial support from donors than from union dues payments. UFW dues are three percent of member wages, and in 2021 the UFW’s union dues were $3.2 million or 43 percent of the UFW’s $7.5 million in receipts. The largest item in the $8.2 million of UFW expenditures was $2.6 million in general overhead, followed by $2.1 million for representational activities. The UFW receives donations from individuals and organizations, including $400,000 from Change to Win and $275,000 from CWOP covid outreach in 2021.

The UFW had $7.5 million in receipts and $8.2 million in expenses in 2021

The UFW reported 5,600 members and agency fee payers in 2021

The UFW reported $350,000 paid for RFK medical benefits for UFW employees, and $75,000 for JDLC pension benefits

The UFW has contracts with 14 CA companies with consumer brands

The UFW persuaded the Legislature to amend the ALRA several times. In 2002, the ALRA was amended to provide for Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation (MMC) if certified unions could not negotiate collective bargaining agreements with employers. MMC allows a mediator to recommend that the ALRB impose a contract soon after a union is certified or if the union was certified in the past and the employer committed an unfair labor practice or ULP.

The ALRA was amended again in 2022 to provide for card-check elections. AB 2183 gave unions three ways to be certified to represent the workers on a farm.

First is the current in-person secret ballot election typically held on the farm that employs the voting workers. Under AB 2183, agricultural employers can insist on in-person secret ballots if they sign labor peace compacts that (1) give union organizers access to workers on their farms, effectively negating the 2021 USSC Cedar Point decision that limited the automatic access of union organizers to enter farms and talk to workers that was granted by the ALRB by regulation in 1975 and (2) promise to remain neutral during union organizing efforts. No employers registered for labor peace with the ALRB in January 2023.

Second, AB 2183 permits mail-in ballots that can be pre-filled by unions, signed by workers, and returned to the ALRB by workers or the union; this option is to be eliminated by promised legislation in 2023. Third are card check elections, which means that workers sign union authorization cards given to them by union organizers. Unions have a year to collect sufficient signed authorization cards before they can file a Majority Support Petition with the ALRB seeking certification to represent workers on a farm. Up to 75 card-check elections are allowed by 2028.

AB 2183 also allows the ALRB to impose civil penalties of $10,000 to $25,000 for each employer unfair labor practice, requires employers to post a bond before appealing an ALRB decision to a state Court of Appeal, and imposes a “burden of proof” standard on any party seeking to set aside a union election that it believes was tainted.

AB 2183 was supported by the UFW and the CRLA. Farm employers opposed AB 2183, emphasizing that employers who did not sign labor peace agreements could see union organizers pressure their employees to sign union authorization cards and allow a union could be certified without a secret-ballot election. Employer associations advised their members not to sign labor-peace agreements.

FLOC. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee is an Ohio-based union that represents farm workers in OH and NC. FLOC charges 2.5 percent of gross earnings for union dues, and had receipts of $640,000 and expenses of $670,000 in 2021.

90% of FLOC receipts are union dues, and 2/3 of expenditures are for representation

FLOC reported 1,200 members and 120 associate members in 2021

Baldemar Velasquez founded the FLOC in 1967 and was challenged for re-election as president of FLOC in September 2022 by a former FLOC VP in North Carolina, Leticia Zavala. Velasquez won re-election 135-21 in what Zavala supporters call a rigged election; they wanted the FLOC convention to be held in North Carolina so that more farm workers could participate.

Some of the delegates who voted for Velasquez were “certain non-farmworkers who have demonstrated their support” of FLOC, including 20 Velasquez family members who voted at the 2022 FLOC convention and associate members who pay $30 a year to FLOC.

When Zavala announced that she was running for president of FLOC, she and her supporters were allegedly harassed by Velasquez and eventually fired. Zavala and her supporters believe that Velasquez’s refusal to step down, and his efforts to make his relatives union leaders, puts FLOC on the same path as the UFW as an enterprise run by and for the descendants of the founder.

FLOC has a contract with the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), which brings H-2A workers from Mexico to North Carolina tobacco and cucumber farms. The contract covers almost 10,000 H-2A workers but, as a right-to-work state, only some of the covered workers pay 2.5 percent of their wages to FLOC in union dues.

Velasquez led a boycott and march from Ohio to Campbell’s headquarters near Philadelphia in 1983 to win a contract that recognized FLOC as the representatives of workers employed by farmers who sold cucumbers to Campbell’s, and used a similar march and boycott strategy to win a three-way agreement between Mt Olive Pickle, FLOC, and cucumber growers in North Carolina in 1999.

References

BLS. 2023. Union Members 2022.

Rural Migration News. 2019. UFW and FLOC: Income and Members.

A Contested Election Is Fracturing a Farmworkers’ Union. Civil Eats.

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