Union membership in so-called “right-to-work” states saw significant declines in 2024.
“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.”
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