Since the 1930s, labor unions have positioned themselves as representatives of American workers. However, recent data show that union membership has declined to less than 10 percent of the workforce. Despite this decrease, politicians continue to treat union leaders as spokespersons for all workers.
This representation may have been justified in previous decades when unionization rates were higher. During George Meany’s leadership of the AFL-CIO from the 1950s through the 1970s, up to a third of wage and salary workers belonged to unions. Now, according to recent reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than one in ten workers are union members. In the private sector, this figure is even lower—less than one in sixteen.
Nearly half of current union members are employed by government at the state, local, or federal level, while only about 15 percent of U.S. workers overall work in government positions. Union members also tend to be more likely college-educated compared with the general workforce.
“Union bosses actually speak, at most, for a disproportionately privileged, government-employed segment of workers,” according to the essay’s author. “This is a warning to political figures and campaigners who would use union bosses as a proxy for the voice of workers as a whole: The bosses are unrepresentative, and they answer to a segment of workers that is not of the hard-hat and lunch-pail set that many politicos hope to reach.”
The essay argues that union leaders’ political activity does not reflect their members’ diverse views but instead aligns with left-leaning ideologies: “Indeed, union bosses’ approach to politics is nakedly partisan and ideologically committed to the Everything Leftism of the professional activist class that staffs the union office.” According to OpenSecrets’ data on 2024 political spending by unions, 87.3 percent went to Democratic campaigns while only 11.8 percent was given to Republicans.
Polling suggests there is more diversity among union households than among those who run unions: “Exit polls from the 2024 general election showed that then–Vice President Kamala Harris beat Republican President Donald Trump by only a 53–45 margin among the 19 percent of Americans who are members of ‘union households.'”
The essay concludes that labor organizations today represent a narrow portion of American workers and calls for new ways for worker voices to be heard: “Those hoping to hear workers’ voices need to find an alternative to union bosses who have shown they barely speak for their members and their families, much less all laborers. And those workers need the freedom to ensure that their voices can be heard over the voices of union bosses who erroneously purport to speak for them.”
