The AFLCIO reported that:

“Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16- to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of  61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members. Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.”

Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 36.8 percent, while the lowest rate occurred in sales and related occupations (3.0 percent). Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.1 percent) and North Carolina again had the lowest rate (2.9 percent). In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $729.

In 1983, the first year for which comparable union  data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.

Handing in the million signature petition to recall Gov Walker. Photo: Wisconsin AFL-CIO

Unions in Wisconsin, a year into their titanic battle with Republican Governor Scott Walker over the scrapping of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, were celebrating today as they handed in over a million signatures on a recall petition demanding a new election for the Governorship. Under Wisconsin law, they only needed 540,000, but the final count showed that over a million Wisconsin voters want Walker out. What’s really incredible about this is that there are only 3.2 million people registered to vote in the state, and at the last gubernatorial election, only just over a million voted for Governor Walker. The summer recall election – in a state that voted Democrat in 2008 but Republican in 2010 – will be a key indicator of how the Presidential election will go. At the same time, recall petitions on three Republican state senators were also handed in.

Indiana State Capitol building. Photo Cindy Seigle.

Following on from last year’s battles in Wisconsin and Ohio,  the latest key battleground state on union rights is Indiana (where a similar battle last spring was ended when state Democrats prevented a vote in the legislature by absenting themselves and denying the Republicans a quorum). State Republicans are seeking to introduce the same ”right to work” laws that exist in 22 other states of the USA (there’s a great explanation of the issue – and a map of which states have such laws - on the Bad for Indiana website) and hinder the trade union movement’s ability to bargain collectively over pay, or ensure decent health and safety laws.

Whilst these moves by Republicans (often backed by the employers who will directly benefit) have all been couched in terms of public sector austerity or competitiveness and job creation (and rebutted by unions and their allies concerned that they will actually lead to greater inequality, lower wages and worse terms and conditions for workers generally), there’s more than a hint of pre-Presidential politicking in the air. These states are key Presidential battleground states, and a key objective of the right is to cripple unions so that they are less able to help Obama and the Democrats win the forthcoming Presidential and Congressional elections in the fall. Even when the right loses, they very often drag the unions into hugely expensive campaigns which drain them of money they would otherwise be able to use in get-out-the-vote campaigns, and persuading members to vote for candidates who share union policies on issues like the economy and workers’ rights.

But it’s a high risk strategy, as the crushing defeat of the move in Ohio showed last fall, and the recall elections which saw Republicans lose out in the Wisconsin legislature last year (and which could also affect the Governor this year) show. In Indiana, where the iconic US football Super Bowl takes place in Indianapolis on 5 February, it has prompted the football players’ union which represents every single player in that competition to protest, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reports in this fabulous newscast. That could impact seriously on Republican support, whatever happens in the Indiana state legislature.

Unions in Indiana are of course campaigning against this move by state Republicans, and have a great toolkit on the state AFLCIO website.

The flyer for their event makes clear the old union adage – your fight is our fight:

Like their US counterparts, British officials want to slash public worker pensions to cut public deficits — even though, like Social Security in the US, British pension funds are financially sound.

Great news this morning from Ohio, which along with Wisconsin is one of the slew of US states where Republicans (in this case Governor John Kasich) have been trying to remove collective bargaining rights and key working conditions from public sector workers in the name of austerity.

A publicly demanded referendum has dramatically overturned the law Gov Kasich rammed through in the face of protests last March. That they did so in the face of well funded campaigns by right wing outrider organisations, and attempts to restrict access to voting makes the 2/3 majority result all the more impressive.

Owen has more on Kasich’s plans and the union-backed campaign against them over at Touchstone.

The AFL-CIO have this nice 2 minute video documenting the campaign. It’s inspiring viewing and an important illustration of the principle that we need to be doing more in documenting our campaigns as they take place, not just once we’ve (hopefully) won them.

Sharing what went well and how the campaign came together is more valuable for building future campaigns than any amount of victory speeches, and given the scale of the problem activists currently face in the US, there are going to be a lot more of those future campaigns to come.

As I’ve said here before, unions won’t want to co-opt the protests – and the protesters wouldn’t want them to. But there is a clear alliance to be formed with a new social movement, and a job for unions to do in responding to their concerns (as well as offering the practical and reciprocated support that in a past era characterised the US union relationship with the civil rights movement).

Unions have traditionally played that role, and in some ways it explains the relationship between members and the institutions too, although the ability to elect the leadership adds a key dimension of directness, of course. In the organising model of trade unionism, union members in a workplace will basically ‘do it themselves’ with the union structure providing assistance and support when needed, as well as generalising concerns by making demands on governments.

Alternative models where full-time officers do everything for the members are horrendously expensive and – except perhaps for pump-priming as a union is built up in a workplace – sort of miss the point of autonomous collective organisation on which trade unionism is based.

Unions therefore combine support for autonomous worker activism with speaking on behalf of workers in general to institutions like governments – as Wallsten captures perfectly in describing AFLCIO President Rich Trumka’s recent diary:

“Two weeks ago, he was charming Occupy activists with a personal visit and a delivery of hundreds of fresh bagels. But this week, he sat down for a private meeting with the ultimate insider — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

That’s what unions do.

Placard from #OccupyWallStreet. Photo by Eric Hart

Days ago, the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement in the USA was on the fringes – on the outside left, a howl of protest that many might have sympathised with, but which stood outside the mainstream of political debate. But today, America’s trade unions marched with the movement, and AFLCIO President Rich Trumka issued this statement of support.

Trade unions came on board at the weekend, when transit workers in the TWU were ordered by police to carry away over 700 arrested protesters. They didn’t want to do it, and their union backed them, but the courts ordered them to proceed. So the unions – unable to strike over the issue – joined the protests instead, taking to the streets in a mass march this afternoon.

Demonstrating that unions can connect with popular discontent, Rich Trumka expressed the way that ‘Occupy Wall Street’ have come to stand for the concern many feel, across the USA:

“Occupy Wall Street has captured the imagination and passion of millions of Americans who have lost hope that our nation’s policymakers are speaking for them. We support the protesters in their determination to hold Wall Street accountable and create good jobs. We are proud that today on Wall Street, bus drivers, painters, nurses and utility workers are joining students and homeowners, the unemployed and the underemployed to call for fundamental change.”

Union protesters outside BAT headquarters

BAT claims that their lack of a direct employment relationship (farmworkers are employed by growers/farmers who contract to the tobacco companies, sometimes through a further intermediary) absolves them of responsibility or power over the farmworkers’ conditions. But it is in the nature of global supply chains that such multinationals are, in fact, responsible for the employment and living conditions of the people from whom global profits are extracted. And unions are increasingly using those supply chains to campaign for union recognition and better terms and conditions for some of the least powerful workers in today’s global market.

The campaign in London saw a coalition including the union representing tobacco workers in the UK (Unite), the US equivalent of the TUC, the AFL-CIO, the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) and the National Farm Workers Ministry, an ecumenical faith group from the USA, all of them pictured here outside the London headquarters of BAT.

Pictured left to right are: Jennie Formby (Unite), Burcu Ayan (IUF), Diego Reyes (FLOC member), Virginia Nesmith (NFWM), Baldemar Velasquez (FLOC President), Ron Oswald (IUF General Secretary), Penny Schantz (AFLCIO), Owen Tudor (TUC). Mac Urata of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) took the picture.