Add another growing split to the increasingly divided United States: union membership.
US states that protect unions’ collective bargaining rights have experienced an increase in new union members, while states with anti-union “right to work” laws are responsible for declines in union members, a new report reveals.
The report on the state of unions by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found significant discrepancies between the 26 states in the US with “right to work” laws compared with the 24 states and Washington DC that protect collective bargaining rights.
The right-to-work states, concentrated in the south and central US, have a union density of 5.1%, compared with 14.2% for states with collective bargaining rights, concentrated on the coasts and in the north.
Workers in right-to-work states earn about 7% less in wages, accounting for local differences in the cost of living. According to the AFL-CIO, the US’s largest labor federation, states with right-to-work laws received 36% higher discrimination charges from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on average.
Right-to-work laws allow workers represented by unions to stop paying dues for the services and benefits they receive through union representation, depleting resources from labor unions. Public sector workers in all 50 states have also had their collective bargaining rights stripped through the imposition of right-to-work laws by the US supreme court’s 2018 decision Janus v AFSCME.
In 2024, states that protect collective bargaining saw an increase of nearly 10,000 union members, compared with the loss of 200,000 union members in states with right-to-work laws.
The report analyzed the impact of Illinois’ 2022 constitutional amendment that guarantees the right of collective bargaining and bans right-to-work laws. Illinois added 27,000 union members in 2024, increasing its unionization rate to 13.1%. Illinois organized more union members from 2022 through 2024, 18,300 members, than the previous seven years combined, the report states.
The report found union members in Illinois are also 8.3% more likely to own homes, 5.2% more likely to have health insurance coverage, and 1 to 4 percentage points less likely to rely on government assistance programs such as Medicaid and Snap food assistance benefits.
Similar results were found in Michigan in the wake of repealing the state’s “right to work” law in 2023. Nearly 15,000 union members were added in Michigan from 2023 to 2024.
The report comes as the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and the California representative Brad Sherman have reintroduced the nationwide right to unionize act last week, a bill to invalidate right-to-work laws that weaken unions’ ability to organize workers.
Frank Manzo, co-author of the report and an economist at the Illinois Economic Policy Institute, noted that despite the headwinds facing labor unions in terms of the Janus decision, weak labor laws and overwhelmingly opposition to unionization from employers, unions have remained steadfast in states that protect collective bargaining while declining in those that do not.
“It’s all occurring at a time when support for unions remains high and bipartisan, with seven in 10 Americans approving unions, and millions of workers reporting that they would join unions and would organize their workplaces if they could, per surveys,” said Manzo. “The economy does better, workers do better and taxpayers do better when states and the federal government allows and, in fact, encourages workers to collectively bargain.”
“It is very difficult to organize a union, and it is difficult to get a first contract. When the law, the politics and the infrastructure are intentionally designed to disincentivize and to keep, if not outright prevent, workers from having a collective voice, it shouldn’t be surprising to see some dilution, some reduction in density,” said Dr Robert Bruno, co-author of the report and director of the Project for Middle Class Renewal.
“The state of the labor movement is not only tied to economic prosperity for working people, but it’s relevant to democracy,” he added. “Attacking a union, attacking the labor movement, is a way to restrain, limit and diminish democracy in society.”
