What Can Obama Do for the Labor Movement?

Steven Greenhouse, the labor reporter for the Times, has a fascinating piece in Thursday’s paper about the fact that union membership, as a proportion of the work force, has fallen to the lowest level since 1916. While the article focusses on the challenges facing the labor movement, it also involves larger political and economic issues. In particular, it raises the question of what, if anything, President Obama can do to help unions reverse decades of decline. And if the Republicans’ control of the House means he can’t do anything much, what does that mean for his pledge to increase the living standards of middle-class Americans?

The union-membership figures are stark and getting starker. Sixty years ago, about one in three workers were union members. Today, it’s one in nine. Last year, the economy as a whole added about 2.4 million jobs, but union membership fell by 400,000. As a proportion of the labor force, the number of union members fell from 11.8 per cent in 2011 to 11.3 per cent in 2012. Outside of the government sector, where more than a third of employees are union members, the unions have even less sway. Just 6.6 per cent of the private-sector labor force is unionized, which means that fourteen out of fifteen workers aren’t union members. Most of them have never had anything to do with the labor movement and never will.

Union membership has been sliding for a long time. But it is still striking to see it falling when the economy is recovering (albeit slowly); the manufacturing sector—traditionally a union stronghold—is doing pretty well; and the Democratic Party is, at least nominally, in power. Five or ten years ago, with unions like the S.E.I.U. making gains in organizing low-paid workers in the service sector—such as janitors, nurses, and cleaners—the decline in unionization seemed to be bottoming out. No longer. With big manufacturers still moving their operations to the non-union South, and with states such as Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan seeking to undermine their public sector unions (and generally succeeding), the labor movement is facing another big crisis.

From an economic perspective, this has implications for middle-class income stagnation, which is perhaps the central economic (and political) fact of the past forty years. While the decline of unions isn’t primarily responsible for the fact that median household income is no higher today than it was in 1989—and only about five per cent higher than it was in 1973—it surely has played some role. As Greenhouse points out, even today, in their weakened position, unions as a whole deliver substantial wage gains to their members. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual earnings of full-time workers who are members of unions is $49,000, compared to $38,600 for comparable workers who aren’t in unions.

Of course, unions also have their downsides. By installing restrictive practices and extracting generous benefits from friendly politicians—in New York State, some cops and firefighters receive pensions averaging about a hundred thousand dollars a year upon their early retirement—they can prevent innovation and bloat up public budgets. But for a President who has put bolstering the middle class at the center of his agenda, and who owes the unions big time for their contributions and organizing efforts during his reëlection campaign, the onus is on him to do something. But what?

Back in 2007, the then Senator Obama co-sponsored a so-called “card check” bill, which would have allowed unions to organize simply by getting a majority of workers in a certain locale to sign a petition saying they want to join. (Under current law, there also has to be a secret ballot, which the unions claim, with some justification, allows employers to intimidate their employees.) In March, 2009, with the Democrats supposedly controlling Capitol Hill, Rep. George Miller, of California, introduced another card-check bill, but in the face of vigorous opposition from Republicans, business groups, and even some pro-business Democrats, it went nowhere—a failure that some union leaders blamed on lack of leadership from Obama and the White House.

Now that Obama’s back in the White House, is the reform of labor laws back on the agenda? Almost certainly not. With the Republicans controlling the House, any effort to revive the card-check bill would be doomed. The day before November’s election, Richard Trumka, the head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., claimed that unions would get card-check passed during Obama’s second term, but absent a stunning turnaround in the 2014 mid-term elections, that is surely wishful thinking.

With anything that requires congressional approval effectively ruled out, Obama’s options for repaying the unions are limited. One thing he’s already done is speak out against the so-called right-to-work laws that Michigan and other Republican-run states are introducing, which permit workers in unionized workplaces to withhold their dues. As the latest figures from the B.L.S. make clear, the Republican union-bashing is working. Last year, union membership fell by eighteen per cent in Indiana and by thirteen per cent in Wisconsin. The unions badly need the President’s active involvement in the struggle against these G.O.P. initiatives, many of which are being helped along by the right-wing’s most prominent donors. If Obama is serious about leading the fight, the State of the Union would be a good place to start.

The other venue where the unions will be looking for more favorable action is the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces labor laws and oversees elections at workplaces where unions are seeking to organize. During Obama’s first term, the N.L.R.B. thrilled labor activists by objecting to Boeing’s plan to move some of the production of its new 787 Dreamliner—the one with the incendiary lithium-ion batteries—to non-union South Carolina. At the start of 2012, Obama used recess appointments to appoint two union-friendly officials to the N.L.R.B.

By issuing some more rulings favorable to the unions over the next four years, the N.L.R.B. will help tilt the balance of power in the workplace back towards labor. But after many years in which employers were allowed to flout the law and intimidate union organizers with impunity, nobody in the labor movement is under any illusion that these administrative changes will be sufficient to reverse the unions’ historic decline. Indeed, even some economists who are sympathetic to unions believe that their decline is irreversible. In large parts of the country, particularly in the private sector, unions are no longer a major player in the economy. Changing that is going to take much more than two terms of Obama in the White House. But if he is serious about pursuing a liberal agenda, he can’t avoid getting involved.

Illustration by Laurent Cilluffo.