How unions fared in 2020

Whenever there’s a change in the political party at the White House, we usually see a shift in policy at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), too. This year is unique because, in addition to the change in leadership, we are slowly emerging from more than a year of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the changes, we thought it might be time to look back on how unions did in 2020 and what might be coming.

Unions lost members in 2020

Earlier this year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its 2020 union members summary. According to the report, unions lost 321,000 members in 2020, a drop of 2.2%. Pretty bad, huh? Maybe not, if you look at it in relative terms.

Even though the economy shed almost 10 million jobs because of the pandemic, the percentage of the overall workforce in unions (also known as “union density”) was slightly higher at the end of 2020 than at the start. In a classic glass-half-full take, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumpka predicted the slight increase in union density is “part of a national groundswell.”

Amazon election’s impact on organizing

On April 9, 2021, warehouse workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, facility voted overwhelmingly to remain nonunion. Overturning the result will be an uphill fight.