Union membership

Union membership has fallen from 20% in 1983 to 10% today. Public union membership is at 34% of workers but private unions are only at 6.1%. Unions organizing at Starbucks and Amazon were briefly in the news but that has come to a stop as the bargaining process is tied up. Union employees make an average of 30% more than non-union workers. 92% of union workers have job-related health coverage versus 68% of non-union workers. Union workers are more likely to have guaranteed pensions than non-union employees. I was a plant manager where the union tried to organize. They would have reps standing outside the plant everyday asking employees to sign a card asking for unionization. When they got 50% of employees to sign they could request a secret ballot. The problem was high turnover in the plant so it took a very long time to get the votes. When you look at a place like Starbucks you have to have reps at many different locations and by the time you get one place to sign the people at the other place have left. It is a long and costly way to get 50% to sign up at a given time. It is easier at Amazon because they may have a thousand employees at one location. This was accomplished at a New York Amazon warehouse. The company refused to allow a vote and instead referred the matter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) where it is now tied up with legal maneuvers. The longer this takes the more Amazon employees will leave and in time a new election can be called for and the whole process will start over. The laws need to be changed before union membership will increase. Biden says he is the union president but he has not proposed any changes in the law that would resolve these shortcomings. His proposed changes kind of skirt the issue.