September 29, 2007

Unions Keep Growing, AFSCME Leads the Pack

Never mind the doomsayers. In spite of the Bush administration’s repeated efforts to undermine union membership, the labor movement remains strong.

According to documents filed with the U.S. Labor Department, between 2004 and 2006 AFL-CIO unions grew by a combined 1.42 percent, a net growth of 136,000 members. Leading the pack is AFSCME, which gained more than 120,000 members. Numerous workers joined AFSCME during the period, including child care providers in New York, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin, bus drivers in Indiana and thousands more across the country.

Imagine what would happen if workers were actually free to join unions and didn’t have to fight tooth and nail to assert their right to bargain for a better future. Just take a look at some examples of organizing amid employer intimidation from this recent issue of AFSCME WORKS magazine. Remember that over 60 percent of Americans approve of labor unions and some 60 million workers say they would be part of one if they could.

This is why we support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), an initiative to allow people to join unions – either by ballot elections or majority sign-up – without employer interference. This is also why supporting a candidate that’s friendly to working families will be so important in ’08.

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