NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
February 7, 2020 | PAGE 5
Union membership up in Oregon,
down in Washington, nationwide
Union membership in Oregon increased from 256,000 to 277,000 in 2019, ac-
cording to the latest annual estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
That bucks the national trend, where union membership dropped to 14.574 mil-
lion, down 170,000 (0.2%) from 2018. In the State of Washington, union mem-
bership dropped slightly from 649,000 in 2018 to 638,000 last year. When the
BLS began its current survey in 1983, 20.1% of American workers were in a union.
The information comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
labor law conference. Labor journalist Kim Kelly spoke to a sold out crowd
of more than 300 unionists at the Oregon Labor Law Conference Jan. 31 in Northeast Port-
land. The yearly gathering provides training on grievance handling and arbitration, collective
bargaining, organizing workers, union governance, legislation, and worker rights. Kelly is a
freelance writer and the labor columnist for Teen Vogue, and a columnist on class and labor
at The New Republic. She also serves as a councilperson for the Writers Guild of America,
East. In 2015, the now 32-year-old led a successful organizing drive at VICE. The greatest
barrier she faced in the union campaign, she said, wasn’t that co-workers were anti-union.
“They didn’t know what a union was.” Kelly said the good contract they were able to achieve
after nine months of bargaining resulted in scores of other digital media shops organizing
throughout the country. “The high union density in digital media means there’s now an
army of pro-labor, pro-union, class conscious people, writers, editors who are now a million
times more sympathetic with labor stories, with worker stories, who are familiar with what
it takes to organize a union and bargain a contract; and what it means to go on strike,” she
told attendees. “I think we’re going to continue to see the ripple effects of that for decades
to come.” Kelly pointed to recent polls showing organized labor’s record-high approval rating
with the public. “Ten years ago, there were like, what, one or two labor journalists to cover
things, maybe hidden away in the business section. Now it’s all over the place.”
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union MeMbers as a
percentage of the workforce
non-union workers earnings
coMpared to union
10.3 % 33.6
81 %
■ Public sector:
■ Private sector:
%
6.2 %
where states rank, froM Most
unionized to least
total union MeMbership
14.6 million
■ Private sector: 7.5 million
■ Public sector: 7.1 million
■ Men: 7.95 million
■ Women: 6.6 million
#1 Hawaii 23.5%
#2 New York 21.0%
#3 Washington 18.8%
#4 Rhode Island 17.4%
#5 Alaska 17.1%
#7 California 15.2%
#10 Oregon 14.4%
#43 Idaho 4.9%
#50 South Carolina 2.7%
See the full BLS report: https://bit.ly/2uuhGN2
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