Despite setbacks and high court’s ruling, unions show spark

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 appearan ces, 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-yearold 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.

“There’s kind of a spark going on now with unions,” Hinton said. “It’s not huge — it’s just a spark.”

Even a spark is significant given the decadeslong drop in organized labor, which in 1980 represented 20 percent of the U.S. workforce and now only includes 10.7 percent. The Republican takeover of state governments over the past decade has added several new hurdles for a movement that typically backs Democrats — Wisconsin and Ohio limited the ability of public sector unions to negotiate for their members and 28 states now allow people represented by unions to decline to pay dues, limiting labor’s financial clout.

One of the biggest blows came on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court ruled that government workers who declined to join labor unions that represent them in collective bargaining cannot be forced to contribute to those unions.

Yet despite — or perhaps because of — the setbacks, union members seem more willing to take risks. The initial teachers walkout in West Virginia, for example, continued even after union leaders cut a deal to bring teachers back into the classrooms — the energized grassroots refused to return to school until they got a better agreement.

“I don’t know if locals have been unusually organized rather than things have just gotten very, very bad,” said Moshe Marvit, a Pittsburgh-based labor attorney and fellow at the Century Foundation.

He noted the teachers’ actions were most aggressive in states where teachers were paid the lowest and have shouldered the biggest cuts. Despite the lowest unemployment rate in decades, the government reported this month that wages last year increased below the rate of inflation — meaning the typical worker effectively suffered a pay cut. At the same time the reduced unemployment rate also lessens the still real risks of organizing or job actions like strikes, because businesses are having a harder time finding workers.

The increase in “right to work” laws that allow people represented by unions to opt out of paying dues means the people continuing to be involved in unions will be the most committed. And, some labor advocates and experts noted, the rising number of government moves against unions — climaxing in Wednesday’s Janus decision — may be encouraging radical actions like the teacher walkouts, which skirted laws against strikes by educators in several states.