FILE – In this April 19, 1952 file photo, the last shift of steel workers at the South Chicago Works of the U.S. Steel Co., come out of the plant at the start of a strike in Chicago, Ill. (AP Photo/Ed Maloney)Their membership has been declining for decades. They’ve been bedeviled by crippling new laws, and by a devastating U.S. Supreme Court decision just this week. From all appearances, it would seem that labor unions are an endangered species.
But here’s the surprise: Organized labor is showing new signs of life.
Last year, labor netted 262,000 new recruits. The movement notched several high-profile wins this spring, organizing 5,000 teaching assistants and graduate students at Harvard and winning an election in a small unit at Boeing in South Carolina, the state with the lowest union density in the nation.
It’s not just that unions are gaining members – they’re also getting more aggressive. The union representing Las Vegas workers voted to strike at Strip casinos and won concessions at some this month, while 250,000 Teamsters authorized a strike at UPS earlier this month before reaching a tentative deal late last week. And, most prominently, tens of thousands of teachers walked out in conservative states from West Virginia to Arizona, winning concessions on education funding that had been cut deeply during the recession.
Mike Hinton, a 39-year-old UPS delivery driver and Teamsters member in Campbellsville, Kentucky, said the teachers were an inspiration to his fellow workers who voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike when their contract expires July 31, and to several friends who have bemoaned that their own workplaces have not been organized by a union.