Key takeaways

• Proposed state legislation to extend full, equal collective bargaining rights to all state and local government workers can help Virginia:
  • reduce the state’s large public-sector pay gap
  • improve public services
  • reduce staff vacancies and turnover
  • decrease racial and gender wage disparities
• Strong collective bargaining rights and increased unionization rates are highly correlated with numerous, widely shared benefits including higher wages, more equitable state economies, and healthier democracies.
• Virginia currently has one of the largest public-sector pay gaps in the nation. State and local government employees in Virginia earn, on average, 26.7% less than private-sector peers with similar education and experience.
• The public-sector pay gap varies across states and is largest in states like Virginia where most public employees lack collective bargaining rights. In Virginia, collective bargaining is currently banned for state employees and only recently became permitted for some local government employees.

In 2026, Virginia lawmakers are poised to consider transformative legislation that would extend full collective bargaining rights to public employees at all levels of state and local government. The benefits of comprehensive collective bargaining rights would extend far beyond affected public employees who would enjoy better working conditions. Stronger state collective bargaining laws can help improve the quality of public services and economic outcomes for all Virginians.

Data show that strong collective bargaining laws help states address persistent public-sector pay gaps, reduce staff vacancies and turnover, and lead to higher unionization rates (Morrissey and Sherer 2024). Increased unionization rates are highly correlated with numerous, widely shared benefits including more equitable state economies and healthier democracies (McNicholas et al. 2025).

For Virginia, expanding public-sector bargaining is a critical next step in building an economy that works for all. The expansion will reverse a long history of anti-worker state policies that have suppressed wages and limited workers’ power in the labor market by blocking pathways to unionization. Such policies have resulted in greater income inequality and persistent racial and gender wage disparities (Bivens and Shierholz 2018; Mishel and Bivens 2021). Strong, comprehensive state legislation covering public employees’ labor rights is also especially important at a moment when the federal government has been attacking the jobs, working conditions, and union contracts of over 235,000 federal civil servants residing in Virginia, and threatening long-standing federal protections of all workers’ rights (EPI 2025b; Oakford and Poydock 2025). 

This report examines how public-sector workers with limited or no collective bargaining rights fare compared with public-sector workers with well-established collective bargaining rights. To do so, we estimate pay differences between state and local government workers and private-sector workers with similar education and experience. In this analysis, Virginia is among a minority of states in which state employees have no bargaining rights and only some local government employees have limited bargaining rights. By contrast, 27 states have well-established collective bargaining rights for state and local government workers (Table 1).

The right to bargain collectively over pay is associated with higher unionization rates (union membership as a share of the workforce) in a given state. This report shows that collective bargaining rights and union strength help state and local government workers narrow the pay gap with private-sector workers. We show that the pay gap for public employees is significantly larger when these workers have weak or no bargaining rights, like public employees in Virginia, which has one of the largest public-sector pay gaps in the nation (-26.7%).

Virginia public employees lack collective bargaining rights

Proposed legislation in Virginia would, for the first time in the state’s history, guarantee that all state and local government employees enjoy labor rights similar to those of their private-sector peers (whose rights to collectively bargain are covered under the federal National Labor Relations Act) (HB 1263 and SB 378). The Virginia Assembly passed similar legislation (HB 2764 and SB 917) in 2025, only to have it vetoed by then-Governor Glenn Youngkin (McGinley 2025). 

Virginia is one of a handful of Southern states that for decades explicitly banned public employees and employers from entering into collective bargaining agreements. In 2020, Virginia took an important step toward making collective bargaining newly optional for local governments, but the state’s policies remain out of step compared with most states. Virginia lacks a statewide collective bargaining statute covering all local government employees and still has a ban in place barring state employees from collective bargaining (Borja 2022).

As shown in Table 1, the majority of states and Washington, D.C., already ensure collective bargaining rights for most public employees, including state workers. Many states have had statewide public-sector bargaining statutes in place for decades (Rueben 1996; Sanes and Schmitt 2014). Such laws typically set clear, uniform guidelines for union elections and contract negotiation processes and establish state labor boards charged with fostering productive labor-management relations (including timely contract settlements), ensuring broad awareness of and compliance with statutory guidelines, and mediating or adjudicating disputes as needed.

Table 1

Who are public employees in Virginia?

In 2024, approximately 560,000 Virginians worked in state and local government occupations (BLS-CES 2020–2025). This includes teachers and school staff, firefighters, transit operators, law enforcement, administrative staff, and employees serving the state’s public safety, transportation, health care, judicial, corrections, and higher education systems. As shown in Table 2, 21.2% of Virginia state government employees and 20.4% of Virginia local government employees are Black, and 57.3% of state government employees and 64.5% of local government employees are women. Many public-sector workers in the state are highly educated. Virginia public-sector workers are more than twice as likely to have advanced degrees as private-sector workers and are much less likely to have a high-school level or less education.

Table 2

Anti-union state policies are rooted in racism and harm all Virginia workers

Virginia’s ban on union contracts for public employees is a Jim Crow-era policy with deep roots in the history of slavery and white supremacy. After the passage of federal labor laws accelerated worker organizing in the 1930s, Virginia joined several Southern states in adopting anti-union state laws designed to prevent multiracial union organizing and suppress Black workers’ wages and power (Childers 2023). The Virginia Assembly first took an explicit stance on public-sector bargaining in response to the unionization of Black hospital employees at the University of Virginia in 1946, via a joint resolution declaring it against the public policy of the state to negotiate with public employee unions (a stance later affirmed by state supreme court decisions and codified in statute in 1993). Virginia was also among the first states to adopt anti-union so-called right-to-work legislation in 1947, an anti-labor policy jointly promoted by white supremacist organizations and industry groups intent on slowing the growth of unions to maintain access to cheap labor—especially in Southern states (The Commonwealth Institute 2022; Watts 2021; Pierce 2017, 2018; Sherer and Gould 2024).

As a result of these long-standing anti-union state policies, unionization rates in Virginia for both public- and private-sector workers are well below national averages.

Figure A

Narrowing Virginia’s large public-sector pay gap

Across the country, public-sector employees earn less than their private-sector counterparts, and this pay gap has widened in recent years. In the latest available five-year period (September 2020–August 2025), state and local government employees earned, on average, 17.2% less than private-sector employees with similar education and experience. The size of the public-sector pay gap varies across states and is largest in states like Virginia where most public employees lack collective bargaining rights. Public-sector workers with strong bargaining rights experience a narrower pay gap (-14.3%) than those with weak (-19.6%) or no bargaining rights (-22.5%) (see Table 3).

Virginia currently has one of the largest public-sector pay gaps in the nation. Among all 50 states, Virginia’s -26.7% public-sector pay gap appears to be the second highest, though differences among states clustered at the bottom of the rankings are not statistically significant. (Pay gap statistics are for full-time wage and salary workers ages 18–64, based on the authors’ analysis of pooled September 2020–August 2025 Current Population Survey microdata downloaded from Flood et al. 2025 and EPI 2025a.)

Compensation packages of public employees, on average, include more robust benefits than those of private-sector workers, but Virginia’s public-sector compensation gap remains large, even when factoring in more robust benefits. Benefits are an estimated 32.0% of pay for private-sector workers in the South Atlantic region and an estimated 51.3% of pay for Virginia public-sector workers. Factoring in benefits, Virginia’s public-sector compensation gap shrinks to a still sizable 16.0% (authors’ estimate based on BLS-ECEC 2020–2025 and Public Plans Data 2020–2024; see Morrissey and Sherer 2024 for methodology).1

Table 3

Addressing high staff vacancy and turnover rates in Virginia’s public sector

The growing public-sector pay gap has become a particular concern at a moment when low pay has created serious challenges to recruiting and retaining teachers and other public employees across the country (Cooper and Martinez Hickey 2022; MissionSquare Research Institute 2023; Wething 2024a, 2024b; Martinez Hickey 2025). Virginia has faced particularly acute staffing shortages in public education and in units of state government in recent years (Manzanares 2025; Cantor 2025).

The latest (2025) biennial compensation report from the state’s Department of Human Resource Management notes that “Years without any salary adjustments in the past have made it difficult for state agencies to build a proactive and sustainable approach to addressing compensation, recruitment and retention concerns” (VDHRM 2025). Between 2001 and 2023, low average salary increases for state workers (just 2.9% per year, compared with 3.4% annually in the private sector) have led to high vacancy and turnover rates. As of 2024, roughly 1 in 5 (22.4%) state jobs were unfilled, and the median salary across the state workforce was just $61,305—a full $5,000 less than the median city employee salary in Richmond, which has adopted its own collective bargaining ordinance (McGinley 2025).

Chronic state employee staffing shortages are already having direct impacts on the health, safety, and quality of life of Virginians. To take one example, in 2025 the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) drew headlines after reporting that inability to adequately staff large facilities for incarcerated youth had led to unsafe conditions, lockdowns, increased restrictions on out-of-cell time, and a lack of rehabilitative services. DJJ directors indicated ongoing difficulty recruiting for open positions, despite participating in job fairs, college and university visits, outreach to military and veteran communities, and offering signing bonuses and referral incentives (Manzanares 2025). The root causes of understaffing identified by Virginia state agencies like DJJ—from burnout and high workloads to low starting salaries, lackluster raises, and difficult or unsafe working conditions—are precisely the topics that a structured collective bargaining process would allow state agencies to address, with direct input from frontline employees.

Addressing racial and gender pay gaps to improve recruitment and retention of workers of color and women

The public-sector pay gap disproportionately affects Black workers and women, who are more likely to be employed in public-sector jobs and who are disadvantaged in the broader labor market (Childers 2025). Strengthening collective bargaining rights for government workers in Virginia therefore promises to narrow the pay gap and reduce racial and gender inequalities in public institutions and across the labor market.

For example, a 2024 RAND report showed that Black teachers nationally receive lower average salaries and pay raises than white teachers do, a difference linked directly to the fact that Black teachers were less likely to live in states where public educators had collective bargaining rights. The inadequacy of pay is one of the main reasons teachers report for leaving the profession, further contributing to the demographic mismatch between teachers and students (e.g., nationwide over half of all students are children of color, but the teaching workforce remains around 80% white) (Steiner et al. 2024; Gopalan 2025). Likewise, data show that in states like Wisconsin where legislators have weakened formerly strong collective bargaining rights in the past two decades, resulting decreases in unionization levels and worker wages have measurably widened public-sector pay gaps and gender pay gaps (Nack et al. 2019; García and Han 2021; Biasi and Sarsons 2022).

Building on success and remedying limitations of current state law that only permits local collective bargaining

In 2020, Virginia partially lifted its long-standing ban on public-sector collective bargaining with legislation creating an “opt-in” system that has allowed local governments to set their own policies on whether and how to bargain with their own employees. While this opening fell far short of creating a consistent statewide framework for collective bargaining, it has resulted in at least 17 of Virginia’s largest cities, counties, and school boards adopting collective bargaining ordinances and creating new pathways to union contracts for substantial numbers of public employees—including, for example, 27,000 teachers and school staff and 12,000 county employees in Fairfax County; nearly 4,000 City of Richmond employees; and others (Borja 2022; Sharma 2022; Khalil 2023; Lukert 2024; Pope 2025; Walter 2026).

The local “opt-in” system was a positive step forward that has already revealed high levels of interest in collective bargaining among Virginia workers. The system resulted in new union contracts covering tens of thousands of frontline educators and civil servants, providing an initial boost to Virginia’s historically low unionization rate.

Significant limitations of the new “opt-in” system have also quickly become clear. As noted above, the major shortcoming of the current law is that it does not ensure equal collective bargaining rights for all public employees. Virginia state employees remain barred from collective bargaining, and in local government where collective bargaining is permitted (but not required), workers continue to lack collective bargaining rights, unless they are able to persuade local officials to adopt and then implement a collective bargaining ordinance. When localities do adopt such ordinances, they may vary in strength and effectiveness (Overman 2023).

As a result, Virginia’s current “opt-in” system for local collective bargaining has generated an uneven patchwork of highly variable (and potentially unstable) collective bargaining policies across the state. Some local governments have continued to block workers’ path to a union contract by rejecting appeals from their own employees to adopt local collective bargaining ordinances (Murphy 2024; Cooper 2025; Lytle 2025; Wilkinson 2025). Because current state law leaves the burden of collective bargaining policy development up to each individual local government, some jurisdictions have expressed interest in or support for collective bargaining while remaining reluctant to invest the necessary time or scarce administrative or legal resources to developing and implementing a local ordinance. Even in larger local jurisdictions with strong collective bargaining ordinances now in place, the “opt-in” system remains fragile and highly vulnerable to instability whenever turnover occurs among elected leaders or administrators with experience necessary to maintain unique local labor-management systems.

Creating a state labor board to provide efficiency and stability for all Virginia public employers and employees

A proposed state labor board equipped to administer a statewide, uniform collective bargaining framework would serve all Virginia state and local government entities and provide consistency, efficiency, stability, and economies of scale. All Virginia public employers and employees would benefit from access to a central, independent state board with capacities to advise public employers and employees about collective bargaining procedures, administer union elections, and mediate contract negotiations. The creation of such state capacities is also especially important at moment when federal labor agencies with similar capacities have been eliminated or rendered non-functional. Indeed, across the country, many states are relying more than ever on their existing state labor boards, and in some cases, are exploring paths to expanding state labor board capacities in order to ensure consistent protections of workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain (H.B. 3005; Walter and Madland 2025).

Conclusion

In 2026, Virginia lawmakers should seize the opportunity to enact strong, comprehensive collective bargaining legislation that covers all state and local government workers and creates a state labor board to administer the new system. Under Virginia’s current state law (where collective bargaining is banned for state employees and allowed only for some local government workers), pay for Virginia public employees has lagged far behind that of private sector counterparts with similar education and experience.

Stronger collective bargaining rights can help shrink Virginia’s large public-sector pay gap, reduce racial and gender pay gaps, and improve recruitment and retention of qualified public employees. Removing barriers to unionization for public employees is also a critical step toward reversing the impacts of long-standing anti-worker state policies in Virginia that have for decades suppressed all workers’ wages and contributed to growing income inequality. Lastly, state action to shore up public employee rights is especially important at moment when the federal government is attacking civil servants, public education, health care, and all public services. By extending full collective bargaining rights to historically excluded state and local government workers, state lawmakers can help lead the way to a more vibrant, equitable economy rooted in multiracial democracy in Virginia, the South, and the nation.

Notes

1. If anything, our comparison likely minimizes the public-sector compensation gap in Virginia by comparing benefits for private-sector workers in the South Atlantic region to public-sector workers throughout the country because public-sector data for the South Atlantic region is not available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our comparison does account for the fact that Virginia pension benefits are less generous than public pensions in many parts of the country, though possibly not in two Northern Virginia counties with their own retirement systems. It does not fully account for other differences in benefits between Virginia public-sector workers and their counterparts in other states, though it does account for the fact that public-sector workers in Virginia are covered by Social Security (not true in some states) and adds 1% for public-sector retiree health benefits that are not included in BLS compensation statistics. Finally, it compares all public-sector workers with all private-sector workers, when arguably the better comparison would be between public-sector workers and private-sector workers employed by large employers, who tend to provide more generous benefits than small employers.

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Summary:

• An anti-union Colorado law, passed in 1943 amid intense big business and white supremacist campaigns to block worker organizing, has suppressed unionization in the state. 
• Resulting low and declining unionization rates in Colorado have corresponded with extreme increases in income inequality, outpacing even stark national increases in inequality.
• Colorado’s unionization rates have for decades remained similar to those in states where anti-union so-called right-to-work laws are in place. At 7.7%, Colorado’s union membership is now 22% below the national average of 9.9%.
• Colorado’s state law poses unnecessary obstacles to unionization for workers who already face union busting when exercising the right to organize under federal law, where employers are charged with labor law violations in 41.5% of all union elections.
• Removing barriers to unionization would enable more Coloradans to improve their wages and working conditions. On average, workers covered by a union contract earn 10.2% more than nonunionized counterparts and are more likely to have employer-provided health and retirement benefits.

Colorado state legislators are considering historic legislation1 to restore workers’ collective bargaining rights by repealing provisions of an 82-year-old statute that limits Colorado workers’ freedom to form unions and collectively bargain.

At present, Colorado private-sector workers who form a union by winning a certification election administered by the National Labor Relations Board are prohibited from negotiating with employers over union security, unless they also pursue a state-administered second election, which they must win by the exceptionally high threshold of a 75% supermajority of those voting or 50% plus one of all eligible voters (not just those participating in the election)—whichever is greater. In other words, Colorado workers face uniquely steep barriers to securing full collective bargaining rights otherwise guaranteed under federal labor law.

While Colorado’s law is unique, its impact and its historical roots in periods of intense big business anti-union backlash and white supremacist campaigns to pass state legislation limiting multiracial worker power are not.

Data show that Colorado’s second election requirement has produced outcomes highly similar to those associated with so-called right-to-work (RTW) laws that prohibit negotiation over union security in other states. Colorado’s second election requirement has suppressed unionization rates, and declining unionization rates have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in income inequality in the state.

Colorado’s 1943 anti-union law led national backlash against worker organizing

Colorado’s state law currently limits workers’ freedom to bargain by banning negotiations over union security unless workers pursue and win (by supermajority) a state-mandated second election. The law in question, misleadingly named the “Labor Peace Act,” was enacted in 1943—just eight years after passage of the federal National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; LPA 1943; Mariam 2024).

The NLRA had declared “encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining” to be “the policy of the United States” in order to reduce “obstructions to the free flow of commerce” and address the “inequality of bargaining power” between employees and employers (NLRA 1935). As union membership increased following passage of the NLRA, a business-backed counter-push in the early 1940s attempted to undermine the new federal labor law and entrench employer bargaining power. After losing court challenges to the NLRA (which was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1937), business groups increasingly turned to state legislation in their attempts to constrain the growth of unions (Dixon 2007).

Colorado’s 1943 anti-union law enshrined in policy elements of a long history of state-sponsored suppression of union organizing. The 1914 Ludlow Massacre, for example, sparked national outrage when at least 20 people (including 11 children) were killed when Colorado National Guard troops set fire to a tent camp of immigrant miners’ families who had been evicted from company housing by the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company while on strike (in turn sparking the bloody “Ten Days War” that followed; Andrews 2010).

In numerous other 19th- and early 20th-century mining strikes, state intervention played similarly decisive roles. Along with company security and private militias, state police and Colorado National Guard troops were often charged with protecting strikebreakers or forcing miners back to work, enabling coal operators to maintain production while refusing to recognize miners’ unions, much less bargain over demands for improvements in wages and mine safety (DeStefanis 2004).

Fueled by white supremacy, state anti-union laws spread in 1940s

In Colorado and elsewhere, 1940s state laws regulating union security were products of business backlash against increasing union activity generally, and in particular against multiracial organizing that had begun to challenge the hyper-exploitation of Black, brown, and immigrant workers in industries like agriculture or mining. Colorado’s 1943 law, along with anti-strike laws passed in in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas, laid groundwork for what soon became the spread of so-called RTW laws to other Southern and Western states over the next decade (Pierce 2017).

Historians have traced the origins of state RTW proposals to Southern conservatives like Texas antisemite Vance Muse. Muse’s white nationalist “Christian American Organization” focused on opposing unions associated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) who had begun organizing Black and white sharecroppers, factory workers, and miners into expansive industrial unions. Muse promoted state RTW policies to Southern state lawmakers as key to maintaining the color line and arresting the advance of CIO organizing that threatened the racial hierarchies underpinning labor exploitation (Pierce 2017; 2018).

Colorado’s passage of anti-union legislation in 1943 was equally central to this history. White supremacist organizations had grown to significant influence in early 20th-century Colorado, with the Ku Klux Klan periodically amassing enough members to take over state government (and many local governments; Davis 2023; Phillips 2018). Influential mining companies like Rockefeller’s staunchly anti-union Colorado Fuel & Iron (CF&I) had for decades relied on state power to protect their interests in standoffs with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), whose leader, John L. Lewis, cofounded the CIO.

Starting in the 1930s, new federal policies had begun to challenge coal companies’ ability to crush unions in Colorado. For example, National Recovery Administration requirements linking federal contracts to union recognition compelled CF&I to begin bargaining with the UMWA in 1933 (Athearn 1985, 161). The start of WWII intensified federal intervention in labor relations in industries critical to national defense. By 1942, the National War Labor Board (NWLB) had invalidated a “company union” at CF&I’s Pueblo steel plant and brokered national coal settlements that included union security clauses in exchange for union no-strike commitments—drawing the ire of industrialists who had long refused to bargain over union security (Gorhan Rice Jr. 1942; Kratz 2018).

Colorado’s 1943 labor law incorporated the emerging RTW movement’s focus on regulating union security in the form of the second election, along with a long list of other measures constraining union effectiveness. For example, Colorado’s law prohibited union political activity (this was later declared unconstitutional); expanded the authority of state courts to issue injunctions blocking worker collective action; and prohibited secondary strikes, boycotts, and pickets, which some unions had successfully used to encourage hostile employers to recognize or negotiate with newly formed unions (Seligson 1959).

Colorado’s state law then served as a primary template for the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which significantly amended the NLRA and enshrined new restrictions on union activity into federal law. In fact, a Colorado-style second election requirement with a simple majority vote threshold was among new restrictions included in Taft-Hartley amendments, though Congress soon deemed the second election superfluous and removed it in 1951. Of more lasting import, Taft-Hartley affirmed the authority of states to enact RTW laws prohibiting union security agreements (Hogler 2009).

1977 Colorado legislation reinstating second election requirement part of resurgent anti-union RTW movement

For decades after passage of Taft-Hartley, much of the Colorado law—including the second election provision—was considered preempted because federal law covered similar areas. In 1976, a lawsuit supported by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation prompted a court ruling that the second election requirement could be enforced. This in turn called into question the legality of thousands of Colorado collective bargaining agreements negotiated without a second election. In what labor law expert Raymond Hogler has characterized as a “deal forged in the heat of a political emergency” with “little policy debate about its merits,” lawmakers responded with a bill that retroactively validated existing collective bargaining agreements but imposed the second election requirement on all future unionizing workers in Colorado (Hogler 2007).

While the lawsuit and legislation leading to reinstatement of the second election requirement fell one step short of an outright ban on union security in the form of a RTW law (which the governor at the time had pledged to veto), it was fully entwined with resurgent late 1970s anti-union campaigns. These campaigns again focused on blocking NLRA reform, slowing the growth of multiracial unions—this time in public and service sectors, where women and Black workers had unionized in growing numbers through the ‘60s and ‘70s—and using state legislatures to regulate union security to frustrate union organizing and union stability (Phillips-Fein 2009, 185–212; Shelton 2017).

Weakened, outdated state and federal labor laws pose obstacles to unionization

Nationally and in Colorado, the share of workers covered by a union contract declined in the four decades since Colorado reinstated its second election requirement. Importantly, this decline was not because workers lost interest in having unions. In fact, during the same period, the number of workers saying they would vote to unionize if given the opportunity steadily increased (to around 60 million in our latest estimate), and public approval of labor unions is now at an historic high of 70% (McNicholas and Tahmincioglu 2022; Shierholz et al. 2024).

In a period of rising inequality (Gould and Kandra 2024; Bivens et al. 2024) and record corporate profits (Bivens 2023), it is no surprise workers want unions. When workers are able to collectively bargain, their wages, benefits, and working conditions improve (Bivens et al. 2017). On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 10.2% more than a nonunionized peer in the same sector with similar education, occupation, and experience and has greater access to paid sick and vacation days, health insurance, and retirement benefits (Banerjee et al. 2021).

The growing gap between the millions of U.S. workers who say they want a union and the low percentage of workers who have been able to access union coverage is explained in part by broken, outdated federal and state labor laws. As noted above, federal labor law (the NLRA) has been weakened, both by court decisions and major 1947 amendments modeled in part on Colorado’s anti-union state law (Seligson 1959). Today, employers routinely exploit weaknesses in the law, mounting aggressive opposition to worker organizing and violating workers’ rights to organize with relative impunity.

Employers are charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns, as shown in Figure A. And nearly a third of union election campaigns (29.3%) involve a charge that a worker was illegally disciplined, fired, or changed work terms for union activity. Beyond this, there are many legal tactics employers can use to thwart union organizing; employers spend roughly $400 million annually on “union avoidance” consultants to help them stave off union elections (McNichols et al. 2019; McNichols et al. 2023; Logan 2025).

Figure A

This combination of illegal conduct and legal coercion ensures that in practice, a majority of union elections are characterized by employer intimidation and in no way reflect the free, fair choice to join a union guaranteed to workers under the NLRA. Additionally, many state laws—like Colorado’s—pose additional unnecessary obstacles to unionizing and limit workers’ collective bargaining rights.

Like so-called RTW laws in other states, Colorado’s anti-union law results in lower wages and benefits for all workers

Figure B shows states with right-to-work laws as of January 2025. Southern and Western states adopted the majority of RTW laws in the 1940s and 1950s. Since 2010, five additional states with historically above-average unionization rates—Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—adopted right-to-work laws, newly limiting workers’ collective bargaining rights in those states. In 2023, Michigan became the first of these states to repeal its RTW law (thus is shown as a non-RTW state in the map; Sherer and Gould 2023).

Figure B

RTW laws are designed to diminish workers’ collective power by prohibiting unions and employers from negotiating union security agreements into collective bargaining agreements, making it harder for workers to form, join, and sustain unions. As a result, states with RTW laws generally have lower unionization rates than non-RTW states (Cooper and Wolfe 2021).2 Figure C displays the unionization rate by state, measured as a 2021–2024 average to smooth data volatility especially pronounced in smaller states. It’s clear from the lighter shading in states with RTW policies, and in Colorado due to the LPA, that these laws continue to play centrally important roles in suppressing union membership levels in these states.

Figure C

Figure D displays unionization rates in each year from 1983 to 2024, grouping states into three categories: RTW, non-RTW, and Colorado on its own because of its second election law. Notably, Colorado’s lower unionization rate closely resembles that of RTW states. The figure also illustrates the downward trend in union membership across the country over the last 40-plus years. The difference in unionization levels between RTW and non-RTW states remained striking throughout this period, and Colorado continues to track the experience of RTW states that limit workers’ collective bargaining rights.

Figure D

Private-sector workers in RTW states are less likely to be covered by a union contract than peers in non-RTW states, even after controlling for other factors that can be related to unionization (such as industry, occupation, education, age, gender, race, ethnicity, and foreign-born status; Jones and Shierholz 2018). 

Consequently, all workers (whether unionized or not) in states with RTW laws tend to have lower wages. On average, workers in states with anti-union laws earn 3.2% less than their counterparts in states without such laws, translating to $1,670 less per year on average for a full-time worker (Sherer and Gould 2024). Workers in RTW states also experience reduced access to health and retirement benefits, and less safe workplaces–including a roughly 14% higher rate of occupational fatalities (Zoorob 2018).

Private-sector unionized workers are more likely to have these valuable workplace benefits. Figure E illustrates that unionized workers are 72% more likely to have employment-provided health insurance and 64% more likely to have employment-provided retirement benefits than their nonunion counterparts. About three-quarters of union workers have employer-provided health benefits compared to less than half of nonunion workers while over four-fifths of union workers have retirement benefits compared with half of nonunion workers.

Figure E

By weakening unions, anti-union state laws fuel economic inequality

State policies like RTW laws that constrain workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain are fundamentally linked to key economic and labor market outcomes—including measures of inequality. Data show that unions reduce income inequality across the economy (Banerjee et al. 2021), counteract racial and gender labor market inequities (EPI 2021), and reduce public-sector pay gaps (Morrissey and Sherer 2022).

Through bringing workers’ collective power to the bargaining table, unions are able to win better wages and benefits for working people—reducing income inequality as a result. As shown in Figure F, there was less income inequality in decades in which union density was higher.3 But as unionization rates declined—particularly after 1979—income inequality grew.

Figure F

Similarly, declining unionization rates in Colorado have been accompanied by a rising share of income accruing to the top 10% and Colorado’s income inequality has become even more extreme than national income inequality. Figure G shows that declines in Colorado’s unionization rate since 1978 were accompanied by a stark increase in income inequality, with the share of income going to the top 10% growing from just under one-third (31%) to now nearly half (48%) of all income in the state.

Figure G

The erosion of collective bargaining over the last four decades has suppressed workers’ wages across the country. Median wages would be 7.9% higher if unionization hadn’t declined between 1979 and 2017 (Mishel 2021). This translates into over $3,900 annually in lost wages for a full-time worker.4

While Colorado’s anti-union state law is unique and bears a different label, it’s had a similar impact: At 7.7%, Colorado’s 2024 union membership rate was 22% below the national average of 9.9%. If we use the more expansive definition of unionization to include not only union members, but also those covered by a union contract, Colorado’s 2024 unionization rate was 28% below the national average (8.0% versus 11.1%).5

All workers are disadvantaged in states where laws have suppressed unionization, but disparities are especially pronounced for women and workers of color because of the role unions play in counteracting labor market discrimination and ensuring equal pay for equal work (Jones and Shierholz 2018; EPI 2021). For example, EPI research has shown that declining unionization rates are a major factor in the persistence and expansion of the Black–white wage gap in recent decades (Wilson and Rodgers III 2016).

Meanwhile, blocking workers’ access to unions especially benefits the rich and fuels income inequality. Four decades of declining unionization rates have ushered in sharp increases in the share of incomes going to the top 10%, staggering increases in CEO pay, and wage suppression for workers (EPI 2021). Nationally, the typical or median worker would have earned $1.56 more per hour (the equivalent of $3,250 per year) in 2017 had unionization rates held steady since 1979 (Mishel 2021).

Conclusion

It will take fundamental reform of our labor laws to rebalance and rebuild an economy capable of generating shared prosperity. At the state level, this reform must start with eliminating unnecessary hurdles to unionization, which Colorado lawmakers have the opportunity to do this year.

Following New Hampshire’s repeated rejection of RTW proposals (Skipworth 2025), Michigan’s 2023 repeal of RTW (Sherer and Gould 2023), and Missouri’s 2018 ballot initiative to reverse RTW laws, Colorado could become the latest state to protect or restore workers’ collective bargaining rights in recent years. Such state action is especially critical at a moment when the future of federal labor law is in question.

The second election requirement is a relic of an anti-union era of Colorado’s history defined by intense and often violent employer hostility to worker organizing in which state government was frequently an active partner. Today, at a moment when workers are looking to unions as critical vehicles for fixing what’s broken in our wildly unequal economy, it’s Colorado’s turn to play a leading role in helping to restore worker bargaining power after decades of its erosion.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Emma Cohn and Joy Donnelly for excellent research assistance and to Penelope Kyritsis for expert editing.

Notes

1. Colorado General Assembly, SB25-005, “Worker Protection Collective Bargaining,” https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb25-005.

2. Unionization rates are measured as the share of workers in each state who are either a member of a union or represented by a union contract.

3. In Figure E, we use a slightly different definition of unionization because it is the only one available in the earlier years of data shown in the figure; to match Figure E, we use the same definition in Figure F. This is the union membership rate, slightly lower than the union coverage rate discussed in earlier charts because it does not include non-members who are nonetheless covered by a union contract.

4. Here, we are extrapolating from 2017 applying the 7.9% difference to the median hourly wage of $23.98 in 2023. For a full-time worker, this yields a difference of $3,940 per year. Further, this is likely a lower bound given the continued decline in unionization of 0.8 percentage points since 2017.

5. For more state-by-state comparisons on unionization, please visit EPI’s new State of Working America data library (EPI 2025).

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Research shows that 60 million workers would join a union if they could. The disconnect between the growing interest in unionization and declining unionization rates can be explained by the fact that there are powerful forces blocking the will of workers: aggressive opposition from employers combined with labor law that is so weak that it doesn’t truly protect workers’ right to organize. Decades of attacks on unions both on the federal and state levels have made it hard for workers to form and maintain unions. Further, weaknesses in federal labor law have made it possible for employers to oppose unions, contributing to this decline.

In this report, we examine the 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on unionization and highlight recent organizing campaigns. We analyze the obstacles workers face when forming unions and reaching a first contract. Finally, we offer policy recommendations to promote unionization and generate an economy that works for all.

Analysis of 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics data

In 2024, 16.0 million workers in the United States were represented by a union. This was 11.1%—more than one in ten—of all wage and salary workers. However, that 16.0 million was a drop of 170,000 from 2023, and the 11.1% unionization rate was a tick down from 11.2%.

The overall unionization numbers mask large differences in unionization by sector. For example, unionization is much higher in the public sector than the private sector. In 2024, 35.7% of public-sector workers were covered by a union contract (down from 36.0% in 2023), compared with 6.7% of private-sector workers (down from 6.9%). The public-sector declines were entirely among state and local government workers; the unionization rate among federal government workers rose by 0.9 percentage points. Within the private sector, there were particularly large movements in manufacturing, which saw a net decline in unionization of 109,000, and private education and health services, which saw a net increase of 70,000. 

The BLS unionization numbers always provide a useful reminder that the conventional idea of union members being largely white men is woefully out of date. Out of all the major racial and ethnic groups, Black workers continued to have the highest unionization rates in 2024, at 13.2%. The 13.2% unionization rate for Black workers compares with 10.8% for white workers, 9.8% for Asian workers, and 9.7% for Hispanic workers. Workers of color, taken together, saw an increase in unionization levels of 68,000 in 2024, while white, non-Hispanic workers saw a decrease of 240,000.1

The gender gap in unionization is small, at just half a percentage point. It declined in 2024, as the unionization rate for men declined from 11.6% to 11.3%, while the rate for women increased from 10.7% to 10.8%.

More than 60 million workers wanted a union but couldn’t get one 

The share of nonunion workers who would like to have a union at their workplace is far higher than the share who actually have union representation. In 2024, 11.1% of workers were covered by a union contract. Survey data from 2017 show that nearly half of nonunion workers (48%) would vote to unionize their workplaces if they could. The 2017 figure is up substantially from previous decades. In 1977 and 1995, only about one-third (32%–33%) of nonunion, nonmanagerial workers said they would vote to unionize if they could (Kochan et al. 2018; EPI 2021). 

While 2017 is the most recent year this survey was conducted, we presume that the share of nonunion workers who would like to unionize was at least 48% in 2024, given the rising popularity of unions since 2017.2 In 2024, there were 128.5 million wage and salary workers who were not represented by a union; 48% of that is 61.7 million. This means that more than 60 million workers in 2024 wanted to join a union but couldn’t. 

Worker and public support for unions are on the rise

The Bureau of Labor Statistics data are just one lens into the state of organized labor in the U.S. Although the latest BLS data show a decline in the unionization rate, many workers continued to make organizing gains within auto manufacturing, hospitality, public education, and health care (Brown 2024). Further, as mentioned briefly above, other data sources illustrate that workers’ interest in and public support for unions are still rising. We explore this in more detail here.

The National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency tasked with administering the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which guarantees most private-sector employees the right to form unions and collectively bargain. The latest data from the NLRB show filings for union election petitions increased by 27% between fiscal years 2023 and 2024. Since 2021, NLRB-conducted elections have more than doubled (NLRB 2024). Further, workers are winning their elections in unprecedented numbers (Wiessner 2024). According to analysis by the Center for American Progress, the union-election win rate broke 70% for the first time in 15 years in 2023 (Glass 2024). Up until the 2010s, average win rates for NLRB-conducted elections were below 60% (Mishel, Rhinehart, and Windham 2020).

In addition to union elections, workers can also form unions through voluntary recognition. This is when employers agree to recognize a union through a majority of signed cards, rather than having workers go through a formal election process. There is no public data source that attempts to track or calculate the number of workers who gain unionization through voluntary recognition. However, a broad array of workers achieved a union through voluntary recognition in 2024, including restaurant workers at the José Andrés Group (Canham-Clyne 2024), digital journalists at CBS News (WGAE 2024), museum workers at the Oakland Museum of California (Cruz Mayeda 2024), and postdocs at Brown University (Hu 2024).

Public support for unions remains high. According to Gallup, seven in 10 Americans (70%) approve of unions. Over the last several years, approval for unions has been its highest since the 1960s (Brenan 2024). Further, a majority (54%) of adults in the United States view the decline of unionization as bad for the country, according to the Pew Research Center (Van Green 2024).

Attacks on unions have created a long-term decline

Despite strong public support and increased worker organizing, we have yet to see this momentum translate into higher unionization rates. It’s worth noting that the current trend is still unfolding. It takes time to organize and win union elections, so not all union activity from the last couple of years will have translated into increased unionization yet. But even more importantly, weaknesses in current U.S. labor law make it harder for workers to join unions and bargain collectively over better pay, benefits, and working conditions.

The National Labor Relations Act guarantees most private-sector workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively. However, decades of federal policy and court decisions have weakened labor law. Most notably, the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 added an “employer free speech” clause, allowing for new legalized forms of employer opposition to unions, such as mandatory “captive audience” meetings. Today, employers often exploit weaknesses in U.S. labor law to mount aggressive opposition to unions. For example, the lack of civil monetary penalties for breaking the law allows employers to violate workers’ rights with little to no repercussions. EPI research estimates that employers are charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns (McNicholas et al. 2019). Further, employers spend over $400 million annually on consultants to dissuade and weaken workers’ unionization efforts (McNicholas et al. 2023).

Employer opposition to unions does not stop once workers win their election. After workers vote in favor of a union, they still need to negotiate with their employer for a first contract. The NLRA requires employers and unions to bargain in good faith but does not require them to reach agreement. Unfortunately, there is no governmental source that tracks data for the time it takes for a union to be recognized and sign their first contract. Studies conducted to answer this question consistently show that reaching a first contract can be a lengthy process (McNicholas, Poydock, and Schmitt 2023). According to analysis by Bloomberg Law, the average time it takes for a union to reach a first contract is 465 days—well over a year (Combs 2022). Employers often drag their feet when negotiating a first contract as a tactic to diminish solidarity and morale within the union. Once a year has passed after an NLRB-certified union election, workers may request to decertify their union. Many employers see first contract negotiations as a second chance to defeat the union. This kind of aggressive employer opposition is a key driver for the decline in unionization.

The U.S. labor market is dynamic and sees a large amount of natural churn each month. For example, if the labor market adds 200,000 jobs in a given month, that would typically be comprised of around 2.5 million job gains at new and expanding businesses and 2.3 million job separations at closing and shrinking businesses—both union and nonunion. Under current labor law—which presents enormous obstacles to organizing—workers are unable to organize new union members fast enough to keep pace with the natural “churning out” of unionized jobs (Shierholz et al. 2024).

State policies also create obstacles for workers to join unions and collectively bargain. Occupational carveouts in federal labor law leave millions of public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers without union rights unless states act. And many states lack comprehensive collective-bargaining frameworks covering public-sector workers (Morrissey and Sherer 2024).

The enactment of Taft-Hartley in 1947 allowed for states to pass anti-union, so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) laws, which have constrained workers’ right to sustain unions and collectively bargain. Consequently, RTW states have lower unionization rates compared with those without such laws (Shierholz et al. 2024). As of 2024, RTW laws have been enacted in 27 states. Research shows that states with RTW laws are associated with lower wages, reduced benefits, and high rates of workplace fatalities (Sherer and Gould 2024).

More recently, several states have further weakened workers’ ability to form unions by enacting laws that bar employers from state economic subsidies if they voluntarily recognize unions, effectively blocking one of the pathways to unionization guaranteed under federal labor law. Since 2023, three states (Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee) have enacted laws that penalize employers if they voluntarily recognize a union (Phillips 2024).

Policy solutions at the federal and state levels

Far more workers want a union than currently have union representation. This disconnect and the overall decline in unionization are the result of broken labor law and fierce corporate opposition to unions. If the labor movement is to make the most of the public’s overwhelming support for unions and boost unionization rates, it needs not just more organizing, but meaningful policy reform. Policymakers must act to ensure that U.S. workers have a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act would provide the necessary reforms; however, the current political landscape makes it difficult to pass these measures. Therefore, policymakers should prioritize the following:

Federal policies

Ensure workers can reach a first contract. Congress should pass legislation that encourages unions and employers to reach a first contract in a timely manner. The National Labor Relations Act requires unions and management to bargain in good faith but does not require that the two sides reach an agreement. As a result, the majority of unions fail to reach a first contract within a year of unionizing (McNicholas, Poydock, and Schmitt 2023). Congress should propose legislation that provides a mediation-and-binding-arbitration process when employers refuse to bargain in good faith.

Establish civil monetary penalties and preserve “make-whole” remedies. Congress should pass legislation that establishes civil monetary penalties for employers who violate the NLRA. These penalties should be commensurate with penalties associated with violations of financial and corporate law (McNicholas et al. 2021). Further, the NLRB should preserve its stance on “make-whole” remedies for workers who are victims of labor law violations. Under Thryv, Inc., the National Labor Relations Board ruled that employers who are in violation of the NLRA are required to compensate workers for all “direct or foreseeable pecuniary harm” suffered because of the employers’ unfair labor practice. This includes loss of wages, benefits, and additional significant financial costs that workers incur (such as out-of-pocket medical costs or credit card debt) because of an unfair labor practice (NLRB 2022).

Nominate worker advocates to the NLRB. Corporations with a history of violating labor law are challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (McNicholas and Rhinehart 2024). As vacancies to the board occur, President Trump should nominate individuals with a background in supporting workers’ right to organize and a willingness to defend the constitutionality of the agency.

State policies

States play a key role, especially in the absence of much-needed federal labor law reforms. States should prioritize the following policies:

Ensure full collective bargaining rights for public employees, farmworkers, and domestic workers. Many U.S. states have enacted or recently strengthened comprehensive collective bargaining laws for state and local public-sector workers that can serve as models for states where public-sector workers lack or have recently lost such coverage (Morrissey and Sherer 2024). More states should take similar steps to ensure a pathway to collective bargaining for agricultural and domestic workers excluded from federal law.

Eliminate anti-union, so-called “right-to-work” laws. More states should restore private-sector workers’ full bargaining rights by repealing anti-union state laws, as Michigan did in 2023 and as is currently proposed in Colorado (Sherer and Gould 2024; Ventrelli 2024). States can further safeguard workers’ collective bargaining rights with constitutional language like the Workers’ Rights Amendment approved by Illinois voters in 2022 (Sherer 2022).

Protect workers’ right to opt out of coercive “captive audience” meetings. More states should continue to adopt laws protecting employees’ freedom of conscience. These policies, already in place in 12 states, prohibit employers from mandating worker attendance at meetings focused on political or religious matters. This includes the anti-union meetings that the NLRB recently ruled as constituting illegal interference with workers’ right to freely choose whether to form or join a union (Perez and Sherer 2024).

Unions are key to creating an economy that works for all, not just the wealthy few. By bringing workers’ collective power to the bargaining table, unions achieve better wages and benefits for working people. Federal and state policymakers must pursue policies that promote workers’ right to form unions and engage in collective bargaining, which in turn will foster a stronger, more equitable economy.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Notre Dame Student Policy Network (SPN) for their contributions to the background research for this report. The authors would like to thank Darren Tanubrata and Grace Garcia for leading the SPN team, which includes Andrew Cansfield, Liesl Erdhardt, Ava Grimaldi, Patrick Kompare, Elle Stanger, Darren Tanuwijaya, and Lauren Young.

Notes

1. The numbers in this sentence are our own calculations from Current Population Survey microdata (EPI 2024). We used our own calculations in this sentence only, in order to look at changes in nonoverlapping categories of “workers of color” and “white non-Hispanic workers.” BLS’s race/ethnicity categorizations overlap—for example, white Hispanic workers are counted as both white and Hispanic—so do not allow for the desired breakdown. All other numbers cited are BLS’s published calculations.

2. Gallup polls indicate that public approval of unions grew from 61% to 70% between 2017 and 2024 (Gallup 2025). Note that the share of the public who approves of unions is related to—but not the same measure as—the share of nonunionized workers who would join a union if they could.

References

Brenan, Megan. 2024. “Democratic Party Still Seen as Better for Union Members.” Gallup, September 9, 2024.

Brown, Jenny. 2024. “2024 in Review: Strikes and Organizing Score Gains, but Storm Clouds Loom.” Labor Notes, December 18, 2024.

Canham-Clyne, Aneurin. 2024. “How José Andrés Restaurant Workers Won Voluntary Union Recognition.” Restaurant Dive, February 23, 2024.

Combs, Robert. 2022. “Now It Takes 465 Days to Sign a Union’s First Contract.” Bloomberg Law, August 2, 2022.

Cruz Mayeda, Olivia. 2024. “OMCA Voluntarily Recognizes Union of OMCA Workers United.” KQED, March 14, 2024.

Economic Policy Institute (EPI). 2021. Working People Want a Voice at Work (fact sheet). April 21, 2021.

Economic Policy Institute. 2024. Current Population Survey Extracts, Version 1.0.60, https://microdata.epi.org.

Gallup. 2025. “Labor Unions” (web page). Accessed on January 14, 2025.

Glass, Aurelia. 2024. Project 2025 Would Undo the NLRB’s Progress on Protecting Workers’ Right to Organize. Center for American Progress, June 20, 2024.

Hu, Grace. 2024. “Brown Postdoc Union Wins University Recognition.” Brown Daily Herald, January 31, 2024.

Kochan, Thomas A., Duanyi Yang, William T. Kimball, and Erin L. Kelly. 2018. “Worker Voice in America: Is There a Gap Between What Workers Expect and What They Experience?” ILR Review 72, no. 1 (January): 3–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793918806250.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, Ihna Mangundayao, and Ali Sait. 2021. “Civil Monetary Penalties for Labor Violations Are Woefully Insufficient to Protect Workers.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), July 15, 2021.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, Samantha Sanders, and Ben Zipperer. 2023. Employers Spend More Than $400 Million per Year on ‘Union-Avoidance’ Consultants to Bolster Their Union-Busting Efforts. Economic Policy Institute, March 2023.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, and John Schmitt. 2023. Workers Are Winning Union Elections, but It Can Take Years to Get Their First Contract. Economic Policy Institute, May 2023.

McNicholas, Celine, Margaret Poydock, Julia Wolfe, Ben Zipperer, Gordon Lafer, and Lola Loustaunau. 2019. Unlawful: U.S. Employers Are Charged with Violating Federal Law in 41.5% of All Union Election Campaigns. Economic Policy Institute, December 2019.

Mishel, Lawrence, Lynn Rhinehart, and Lane Windham. 2020. Explaining the Erosion of Private-Sector Unions: How Corporate Practices and Legal Changes Have Undercut the Ability of Workers to Organize and Bargain. Economic Policy Institute, November 2020. 

Morrissey, Monique, and Jennifer Sherer. 2024. The Public-Sector Pay Gap Is Widening. Unions Help Shrink It. Economic Policy Institute, August 2024.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 2022. “Board Rules Remedies Must Compensate Employees for All Direct or Foreseeable Financial Harms” (press release), December 13, 2022.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 2024. “Union Petitions Filed with NLRB Double Since FY 2021, Up 27% Since FY 2023” (press release), October 14, 2024. 

Perez, Daniel, and Jennifer Sherer. 2024. “NLRB Rules Anti-Union Captive Audience Meetings an Illegal Abuse Of Employer Power: States Must Also Continue to Broaden Protection of Workers’ Freedom from Employer Coercion on Political, Religious Matters.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), November 18, 2024.

Phillips, Chance. 2024. “Bill Penalizing Voluntary Recognition of Unions Is Headed to Governor’s Desk.” Alabama Political Reporter, May 9, 2024.

Rhinehart, Lynn, and Celine McNicholas. 2024. “What’s Behind the Corporate Effort to Kneecap the National Labor Relations Board? SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks Are Trying to Have the NLRB Declared Unconstitutional—After Collectively Being Charged with Hundreds of Violations of Workers’ Organizing Rights.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), March 7, 2024.

Sherer, Jennifer. 2022. “Illinois Workers’ Rights Amendment Sets New Bar for State Worker Power Policy: Other State Legislatures Should Seize the Moment to Advance Worker, Racial, and Gender Justice in 2023.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), December 7, 2022. 

Sherer, Jennifer, and Elise Gould. 2024. “Data Show Anti-Union ‘Right-To-Work’ Laws Damage State Economies: As Michigan’s Repeal Takes Effect, New Hampshire Should Continue to Reject ‘Right-to-Work’ Legislation.” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), February 13, 2024.

Shierholz, Heidi, Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and Jennifer Sherer. 2024. Workers Want Unions, but the Latest Data Point to Obstacles in Their Path. Economic Policy Institute, January 2024.

Van Green, Ted. 2024. “Majorities of Adults See Decline of Union Membership As Bad for the U.S. and Working People.” Pew Research Center, March 12, 2024.

Ventrelli, Marissa. 2024. “At Odds Over Union Law, Colorado Business and Labor Groups Sharpen Arguments Ahead of Capitol Fight.” Colorado Politics, December 19, 2024.

Wiessner, Daniel. 2024. “U.S. Union Organizing, and Unions’ Election Win Rate, Is Surging, NLRB Says.” Reuters, July 17, 2024.

Writers Guild of America East (WGAE). 2024. “CBS News Digital Unionizes with WGA East, Demands Voluntary Recognition” (press release), February 8, 2024.

Chair Danielson and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today in support of SB25-005. My name is Jennifer Sherer, and I’m Deputy Director of State Policy and Research at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank founded in 1986 to research the economic status of working America and propose public policies that protect and improve conditions for low- and middle-wage workers.

It’s an honor to be here to share findings from EPI research as Colorado considers a bill to restore workers’ collective bargaining rights by repealing provisions of an 82-year-old statute that has limited Colorado workers’ freedom to form unions and collectively bargain.

Nationally and in Colorado, the share of workers covered by a union contract has declined in the last four decades. Importantly, this decline was not because workers lost interest in having unions. In fact, during the same period, the number of workers saying they would vote to unionize if given the opportunity steadily increased (to around 60 million in our latest estimate), and public approval of labor unions is now at a historic high of 70%.1

In a period of rising inequality2 and record corporate profits,3 it is no surprise workers want unions. When workers are able to collectively bargain, their wages, benefits, and working conditions improve.4 On average, a worker covered by a union contract:

• earns 10.2% more than a nonunionized peer in the same sector with similar education, occupation, and experience and has greater access to paid sick and vacation days5
• is 64% more likely to have employment-provided health insurance
• is 63% more likely to have retirement benefits6

So why can’t the millions of U.S. workers who say they want a union get one? Broken, outdated federal and state labor laws bear a large share of the blame. Since 1935, federal law has guaranteed workers the freedom to form and join unions. But the law has been weakened, both by court decisions and major 1947 amendments modeled in part on Colorado’s anti-union state law.7 Today employers routinely exploit weaknesses in the law, mounting aggressive opposition to worker organizing and violating the law with few to no repercussions.8

Many states place additional obstacles in the path of workers who seek a union contract, prohibiting bargaining over union security via so-called “right-to-work” laws. Where states maintain these anti-union policies, outcomes include lower unionization rates, lower wages (on average, workers in states with anti-union laws earn 3.2% less than their counterparts in states without such laws, translating to $1,670 less per year per full-time worker),9 and less safe workplaces—including a roughly 14% higher rate of occupational fatalities.10

While Colorado’s anti-union state law is unique and bears a different label, it’s had a similar impact: At 6.9%, Colorado’s 2023 union membership rate was 30% below the national average of 10%.11

All workers are disadvantaged in states where laws have suppressed unionization, but disparities are especially pronounced for women and workers of color12 because of the role unions play in counteracting labor market discrimination and ensuring equal pay for equal work.13 For example, EPI research has shown that declining unionization rates are a major factor in the persistence and expansion of the Black-white wage gap in recent decades.14

Meanwhile, blocking workers’ access to unions especially benefits the rich and fuels income inequality. Four decades of declining unionization rates have ushered in sharp increases in the share of incomes going to the top 10%, staggering increases in CEO pay, and wage suppression for workers.15 Nationally, the “typical” or median worker would have earned $1.56 more per hour (the equivalent of $3,250/year) in 2017 if unionization rates had held steady since 1979.16

Growing income inequality in Colorado has outpaced this national trend and become especially extreme—here the top 10% now take home 47.6% of all income in the state—an over 16% increase after four decades of declining unionization (compared with 11.8% nationally).17

It will take fundamental reform of our labor laws to rebalance and rebuild an economy capable of generating shared prosperity. At the state level, this reform must start with eliminating unnecessary hurdles to unionization, so I urge you to pass SB-005. The second-election rule this bill would repeal is a relic of an anti-union era of Colorado’s history defined by intense and often violent employer hostility to worker organizing in which state government was frequently an active partner. Now, at a moment when workers are looking to unions as critical vehicles for fixing what’s broken in our wildly unequal economy, it’s Colorado’s turn to play a leading role in helping to restore worker bargaining power after decades of its erosion.

Notes

1. Heidi Shierholz et al., Workers Want Unions, but the Latest Data Point to Obstacles in Their Path, Economic Policy Institute, January 2024; Celine McNicholas and Eve Tahmincioglu, “Union Approval Hits Highest Point Since 1965: Here’s Why This Isn’t Surprising,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), August 30, 2022.

2. Elise Gould and Jori Kandra, “Wage Inequality Fell in 2023 amid a Strong Labor Market, Bucking Long-Term Trends: But Top 1% Wages Have Skyrocketed 182% Since 1979 While Bottom 90% Wages Have Seen Just 44% Growth,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), December 11, 2024; Josh Bivens et al., CEO Pay Declined in 2023: But It Has Soared 1,085% Since 1978 Compared with a 24% Rise in Typical Workers’ Pay, Economic Policy Institute, September 2024.

3. Josh Bivens, “Even with Today’s Slowdown, Profit Growth Remains a Big Driver of Inflation: In Recent Years Corporate Profits Have Contributed to More Than a Third of Price Growth,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), March 30, 2023.

4. Bivens et al., How Today’s Unions Help Working People: Giving Workers the Power to Improve Their Jobs and Unrig the Economy, Economic Policy Institute, August 2017.

5. Asha Banerjee et al., Unions Are Not Only Good for Workers, They’re Good for Communities and for Democracy, Economic Policy Institute, December 2021.

6. Jennifer Sherer and Elise Gould “Data Show Anti-Union ‘Right-to-Work’ Laws Damage State Economies: As Michigan’s Repeal Takes Effect, New Hampshire Should Continue to Reject ‘Right-to-Work’ Legislation,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), February 13, 2024.

7. Harry Seligson, “Legislative Decision-Making in Labor Relations,” Labor Law Journal 10, no. 12 (December 1959): 895–911.

8. Celine McNicholas et al., Unlawful: U.S. Employers Are Charged with Violating Federal Law in 41.5% of All Union Election Campaigns, Economic Policy Institute, December 2019; Celine McNicholas et al., Employers Spend More Than $400 Million Per Year on ‘Union-Avoidance’ Consultants to Bolster Their Union-Busting Efforts (fact sheet), Economic Policy Institute, March 29, 2023.

9. Jennifer Sherer and Elise Gould, ”Data Show Anti-Union ‘Right-to-Work’ Laws Damage State Economies: As Michigan’s Repeal Takes Effect, New Hampshire Should Continue to Reject ’Right-to-Work’ Legislation,” Working Economics Blog (Economic Policy Institute), February 13, 2024.

10. Michael Zoorob, “Does ‘Right to Work’ Imperil the Right to Health? The Effect of Labour Unions on Workplace Fatalities,” Occupational and Environmental Medicine 75, (June 2018): 736–738.

11. Economic Policy Institute, “Union Membership Data,” accessed January 19, 2025.

12. Janelle Jones and Heidi Shierholz, Right-to-Work Is Wrong for Missouri: A Breadth of National Evidence Shows Why Missouri Voters Should Reject RTW Law, Economic Policy Institute, July 2018.

13. Economic Policy Institute, Unions Help Reduce Disparities and Strengthen Our Democracy (fact sheet), , April 23, 2021.

14. Valerie Wilson and William M. Rodgers III, Black-White Wage Gaps Expand with Rising Wage Inequality, Economic Policy Institute, September 2016.

15. Economic Policy Institute, Unions Help Reduce Disparities and Strengthen Our Democracy (fact sheet), April 23, 2021.

16. Lawrence Mishel, The Enormous Impact of Eroded Collective Bargaining on Wages, Economic Policy Institute, April 2021.

17. World Inequality Database, “Income inequality, Colorado, 1917–2018,” accessed January 19, 2025.

Key findings:

• Data show that states with so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) laws have lower unionization rates, wages, and benefits compared with non-RTW states.
• On average, workers in RTW states are paid 3.2% less than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, which translates to $1,670 less per year for a full-time worker.
• Claims that weakening unions will lead to state job growth have proven inaccurate. There are no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states.

This week, Michigan’s 2023 repeal of a so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) law takes effect. Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s state legislature is once again debating a RTW bill at a moment when it could not be clearer that RTW laws damage states’ economies by accelerating income inequality and reducing job quality, without delivering any job growth.  

RTW laws—and the phrase “right to work” itself—are intended to deceive and confuse. The misleadingly named policy is designed to make it more difficult for workers to form and sustain unions and negotiate collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out in 1961, “right to work” is a “false slogan” since RTW laws provide neither rights nor work and are in fact designed “to rob us of our civil rights and job rights [and] to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.” Decades later, research bears out King’s contention that “wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower.”

RTW laws are historically rooted in racism and designed to maintain unequal power. When private-sector workers first gained legal protection to unionize following passage of the federal National Labor Relations Act in 1935, unionization rates grew quickly. In response, opponents waged anti-union, explicitly white supremacist campaigns to limit worker power and maintain Jim Crow labor relations. These campaigns pursued state legislation as a means to constrain workers’ newly won federal union rights via RTW policies, and especially to block multiracial union organizing. RTW laws have since spread to 27 states and continue to generate economic outcomes that disadvantage all workers.

Figure A shows that Southern and Western states adopted the majority of RTW laws in the mid-twentieth century. But since 2010, five additional states with historically above average unionization rates—Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—adopted RTW laws, newly limiting workers’ collective bargaining rights in those states. Michigan became the first of these states to repeal its RTW law.

Figure A

Right-wing groups similarly targeted New Hampshire for passage of RTW in 2011, when then-Governor John Lynch vetoed a RTW bill passed by the legislature. New Hampshire has since remained a perennial target for anti-union proposals, with RTW bills rejected at least seven times since 2010. Most recently, the New Hampshire House voted down a 2021 RTW proposal.

No New England state has a RTW law, and repeated defeats of RTW have demonstrated its persistent unpopularity among New Hampshire voters and legislators across party lines. Moreover, RTW has faced three consecutive rejections in other states: Michigan repealing RTW in 2023, Illinois voters approving a constitutional Workers’ Rights Amendment (which bans future RTW laws) in 2022, and Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejecting their legislature’s attempt to impose RTW restrictions in 2018.  

Nonetheless, in 2024, some well-funded, out-of-state anti-union groups continue to demonstrate relentless interest in using state legislatures as vehicles to attack workers’ rights, and RTW was one of the first bills introduced by House Republicans in New Hampshire’s legislative session.

Below, we share the latest data assessing the economic impacts of RTW laws, including in the five states where the law was most recently adopted, illustrating why New Hampshire has been right to repeatedly reject RTW and why lawmakers should do so again in 2024.

So-called “right-to-work” laws constrain workers’ collective bargaining rights, resulting in lower wages and benefits for all workers 

RTW laws are designed to diminish workers’ collective power by prohibiting unions and employers from negotiating union security agreements into collective bargaining agreements, making it harder for workers to form, join, and sustain unions. As a result, states with RTW laws generally have lower unionization rates than non-RTW states. Private-sector workers in RTW states are less likely to be covered by a union contract than peers in non-RTW states, even after controlling for other factors that can be related to unionization (such as industry, occupation, education, age, gender, race, ethnicity, and foreign-born status). 

Consequently, workers in states with RTW laws have lower wages, reduced access to health and retirement benefits, and higher workplace fatality rates. On average, workers in RTW states are paid 3.2% less than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, which translates to $1,670 less per year for a full-time worker.1

Figure B illustrates that unionized workers are 64% more likely to have employment-provided health insurance and 63% more likely to have employment-provided retirement benefits than their non-union counterparts. About 80% of union workers have employer-provided health and retirement benefits compared with only about half of non-union workers.  

Figure B

By weakening unions, “right-to-work” laws fuel economic inequality

State policies like RTW that constrain workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain are fundamentally linked to key economic and labor market outcomes—including measures of inequality. Data show that unions reduce income inequality across the economy, counteract racial and gender labor market inequities, and reduce public-sector pay gaps. 

Through bringing workers’ collective power to the bargaining table, unions are able to win better wages and benefits for working people—reducing income inequality as a result. As shown in Figure C, there was less income inequality in decades when union density was higher. But as unionization rates declined—particularly after 1979—income inequality grew.

The erosion of collective bargaining over the last five decades has suppressed workers’ wages. Median wages would be 7.9% higher if unionization hadn’t declined between 1979 and 2017. This translates into over $3,900 annually in lost wages for a full-time worker.2

Figure C

Figure D shows changes in unionization rates broken down by RTW status, differentiating between states that adopted RTW either before or after 2010. Unionization has declined far more sharply in the states that adopted RTW most recently, falling 3.8 percentage points between 2010 and 2023. But unionization rates remain lowest in states that have long had RTW laws in place. Overall, unionization rates were 5.0% in states that had adopted RTW prior to 2010, 9.7% in states that adopted RTW after 2010, and 14.3% in non-RTW states.

In New Hampshire, union membership held fairly steady during this period, dropping only 0.9 percentage points between 2010 and 2023. The New Hampshire unionization rate was 9.3% in 2023, just below the national average of 10.0%. If New Hampshire adopted RTW, they could expect to risk similarly accelerating declines in union membership and increasing income inequality.

Figure D

“Right-to-work” laws erode job quality without creating job growth

Despite persistent claims from RTW proponents that weakening unions will lead to state job growth, comparisons of RTW and non-RTW states over decades show no relationship between employment levels and RTW laws. Figure E illustrates the prime-age employment-to-population ratio—the share of the population ages 25–54 with a job—has no clear differences among three sets of states: those that have remained non-RTW, those that adopted RTW before 2010, and those that adopted RTW after 2010. Employment trends across all sets of states reflect fluctuations within business cycles; recessions are shaded in grey. There are no measurable employment advantages between RTW and non-RTW states.

Figure E

Prior studies have likewise shown no causal link between a state’s RTW status and its job growth. For example, studies of Oklahoma after the state enacted RTW in 2001 found a significant reduction in private-sector unionization, but no measurable effect on employment growth. Similarly, researchers at the University of Kentucky examined state economic performance across Southern U.S. states from 1964 to 2004 and found that RTW status had no relationship to state economic outcomes. When studies have claimed to find such effects, it is often due to failure to control for other critical factors, such as education levels of the workforce, proximity to transportation hubs, technological advances, or natural resources.

New Hampshire should continue to reject RTW and the economic damage it inflicts on states

At a moment of historic inequality and record corporate profits, it is no surprise we are also seeing historically high levels of approval for unions. Workers are looking to unions as critical vehicles for fixing what’s broken at work and in our wildly unequal economy. The large gap between the share of workers who want a union and the share of workers who are in a union underscores that our weak federal labor laws, which are further undermined by RTW measures in over half of U.S. states, are not working. Because state RTW laws diminish workers’ rights, weaken unions, and further concentrate corporate power, they are the opposite of what states need to address chronic economic problems of widening inequality and eroding job quality.

Fundamental reform of our labor laws is required to rebuild an economy that guarantees all workers the freedom to unionize and collectively bargain, and no longer leaves most workers behind. At the state level, this reform must include repeal of existing RTW laws across the country, and continued rejection of new RTW proposals in states like New Hampshire.

Notes

1. This difference is based on a regression model which accounts for demographic differences (e.g. gender, age, marital status, race/ethnicity, and education), individual labor market controls (e.g. full-time status, hourly status, union status, occupation, and industry), state-level labor market controls (e.g. unemployment rate), and three measures that account for differences in the cost of living between RTW and non-RTW states. The 3.2% difference in average wages is applied to an average wage of $23.98.

2. Here, we are extrapolating from 2017 applying the 7.9% difference to the median hourly wage of $23.98 in 2023. For a full-time worker, this yields a difference of $3,940 per year. Further, this is likely a lower bound given the continued decline in unionization of 0.8 percentage points since 2017.

However, we are not seeing this resurgence translate into significant increases in union density. In 2023, 16.2 million workers in the United States were represented by a union. While that is an increase of 191,000 workers, the share of workers represented by a union declined from 11.3% to 11.2%. And though there were gains in private-sector unionization, the public sector experienced losses.

It is important to view this data in context. Union density has consistently declined over the past five decades. There are many factors that contributed to this decline, but at its core the decline reflects an intentional political effort to suppress workers’ wage growth and shift income to profits and executive salaries by stripping away the most important leverage that workers have—the right to bargain collectively (Mishel, Rhinehart, and Windham 2020).

Employer opposition to unions significantly intensified in the 1970s, and employers now routinely exploit weaknesses in U.S. labor law to legally and illegally defeat union organizing. For nearly 50 years, federal policy has failed to respond to this dynamic. Except for an expansion of coverage into health care in the 1970s, all the legislative changes to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which governs private-sector labor law in the U.S., since its enactment in the mid-1930s have been changes that weakened unions. As a result, U.S. policy effectively denies workers a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining. It is a testament to the commitment to organizing efforts and the enthusiasm of young workers for unions that we saw unionization increase in the private sector by 261,000 in the face of toothless labor policy. Unfortunately, those gains were diminished by the decline in public-sector unionization where the impact of relentless attacks in some states on workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively is being realized.

In this report, we examine the 2023 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on unionization. We analyze the decline in the unionization rate and examine the differences in the private and public sectors. Finally, we offer policy recommendations to promote unionization and build on the momentum we see in increased labor actions.

2023 Bureau of Labor Statistics data: Unionization rate rises in the private sector but declines in the public sector

In 2023, 16.2 million workers in the United States were represented by a union—an increase of 191,000 from 2022. But while the unionization level increased, the share of workers represented by a union—the unionization rate—declined from 11.3% to 11.2%. The unusual situation of the unionization level increasing while the unionization rate decreased is the result of the fact that 2023 saw very strong job growth, with 2.9 million wage and salary jobs added.1 On net, unionization efforts were unable to keep pace with the flood of new jobs.

The overall unionization numbers mask large differences between the private sector and the public sector. Unionization is much lower in the private sector than the public sector—in 2023, 6.9% of private-sector workers were covered by a union contract, compared with 36.0% of public-sector workers. However, the private-sector unionization rate rose in 2023, while the public sector experienced losses.

In the private sector, the unionization level increased by 261,000, while the unionization rate ticked up from 6.8% to 6.9%. There were particularly large increases in manufacturing (99,000), transportation and warehousing (83,000), private educational services (62,000), and private health care and social assistance (62,000). In the public sector, the number of workers covered by a union contract dropped by 70,000, while the unionization rate dropped from 36.8% to 36.0%.

Of all major racial and ethnic groups, Black workers continued to have the highest unionization rates in 2023 at 13.1%. Black workers also saw a meaningful rate increase in 2023, rising to 13.1% from 12.8%. The 13.1% unionization rate for Black workers in 2023 compares with 11.1% for white workers, 10.0% for Hispanic workers, and 9.0% for Asian workers. Further, the entire increase in the level of unionization in 2023 occurred among workers of color. In particular, workers of color saw an increase of 309,000, while white workers saw a decrease of 119,000.2 The number of Black workers represented by a union increased by 135,000, the number of Hispanic workers represented by a union increased by 90,000, and the number of Asian workers represented by a union increased by 22,000.

The gender gap in unionization is small, but it widened slightly in 2023, as the unionization rate for men held steady at 11.6%, while the rate for women declined from 11.0% to 10.7%. With union women disproportionately concentrated in public-sector unions, the increase in the gender gap in unionization is a predictable result of public-sector unionization declining while private-sector unionization grew.

The increase in the overall unionization level occurred disproportionately among workers under 45, with an increase of 229,000, compared with a decline of 38,000 among workers 45 and over.

Overall unionization rates mask large differences across states. In 2023, the states with the highest unionization rates were Hawaii (25.6%), New York (21.5%), Washington state (18.1%), New Jersey (17.3%), Connecticut (16.9%), and California (16.9%). The states with the lowest unionization rates were South Carolina (3.0%), North Carolina (3.3%), South Dakota (4.2%), Arizona (4.8%) and Louisiana (5.2%). The states with the largest increases in the number of workers represented by unions in 2023 were Florida (+67,000), New Jersey (+63,000), Texas (+58,000), Pennsylvania (+55,000), and Virginia (+51,000).

Collective action is on the rise

In 2023, workers organized across a variety of work settings, including higher education, museums, nonprofits, entertainment, retail, and manufacturing (Greenhouse 2023; Shepardson 2023).

This momentum translated into an increase in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections. The NLRB is a small, independent agency tasked with administering the National Labor Relations Act, which guarantees most private-sector employees the right to form unions and collectively bargain. The National Labor Relations Board is responsible for conducting union elections to determine if workers wish to be represented by a union. During the fiscal year (FY) 2023, the NLRB saw a 3% increase in union election petitions (NLRB 2023). This increase builds upon FY 2022’s significant uptick (53%) of union election petitions, which was the highest filed since FY 2015 (NLRB 2022). Not only are workers filing elections at increased rates, they are winning them, too. Analysis from Bloomberg Law finds that NLRB-conducted elections saw an 80% win rate during the first half of 2023 (Combs 2023a). Up until the 2010s, average win rates for NLRB- conducted elections were below 60% (Glass 2022; Mishel, Rhinehart, and Windham 2020).

In addition to forming unions, thousands of workers went on strike or threatened to strike in 2023. Preliminary monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of workers on strike in 2023 exceeded the number from 2022 (BLS 2023e). From Hollywood writers to autoworkers to nurses, many workers succeeded in winning raises, improving working conditions, and maintaining benefits (Simmons-Duffin and Maucione 2023; Dayen 2023; Whalen 2023). The threat to strike often can be just as powerful as the strike itself, as demonstrated by Teamsters union members during their negotiations to secure a fair contract covering 340,000 UPS drivers in the summer of 2023 (Gurley 2023).

Unions have also captured big gains through contract negotiations. According to analysis by Bloomberg Law, union contracts ratified in the first quarter of 2023 gave workers a 7% average first-year pay raise—the largest quarter increase since 2007 (Combs 2023b). These increases are evident by recent contract wins. Earlier this year, Los Angeles school district workers—the second largest school district in the country—won pay increases of 30% during the length of their four-year contract (Jablon 2023). More than 32,000 hourly Disney World workers won wage increases of 37% over the length of their five-year contract (Isidore and Yurkevich 2023). The largest health care strike in history ended with 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers agreeing to a contract that included 21% in wage increases over four years (Isidore and Delouya 2023). And in November 2023, the United Auto Workers union ratified a historic contract with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis that included pay increases ranging from 30% to 160% through the length of the contract for its members (UAW 2023). These recent wins have also resulted in gains for nonunion workers. For example, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai raised wages for their U.S. workers (none of whom are unionized) shortly after the UAW reached a tentative agreement with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis (Meyersohn 2023).

More than 60 million workers wanted a union but couldn’t get one

The share of nonunion workers who would like to have a union at their workplace is far higher than the share who actually have union representation. In 2023, 11.2% of workers were covered by a union contract. Survey data from 2017 show that nearly half of nonunion workers (48%) would vote to unionize their workplace if they could. The 2017 figure is up substantially from previous decades; in 1977 and 1995, only about one-third (32–33%) of nonunion, nonmanagerial workers said they would vote to unionize if they could (Kochan et al. 2018; EPI 2021).

While 2017 is the most recent year the survey of nonunion workers was conducted, we presume that the share of nonunion workers who would like to unionize was at least 48% in 2023, if not higher, given the rise in the popularity of unions since 2017.3 There were 128.3 million wage and salary workers in 2023 who were not represented by a union; 48% of that is 61.6 million. That means that more than 60 million workers in 2023 wanted to join a union but couldn’t.

Attacks on unions have created a long-term decline

Despite the continued popularity of unions among workers and the public, we have yet to see this momentum translate into substantial increases in the number of workers represented by a union. It’s worth noting that the current trend is still unfolding. It takes time to organize and win union elections, and not all of the union activity of the last couple of years will have yet translated into increased unionization. However, it does not explain the long-term trend of declining unionization. In fact, today’s overall union density is lower than before the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935.4 What is causing this disconnect? Simply put, decades of policy decisions have made it harder for workers to form unions and bargain collectively.

Private-sector workers face barriers to union membership under weak federal law

In the private sector, decades of federal policy and court decisions have weakened labor law. Most notably, the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 allowed new legalized forms of employer anti-union activity. Under Taft-Hartley, an “employer free speech” clause was added, mandatory captive audience meetings were allowed, and employers were given the right to file representation petitions to determine whether their workers want to form a union.

Starting in the 1970s, when the overall unionization rate was over 25%, employers began to exploit the weaknesses in the National Labor Relations Act (EPI 2023a). For example, employers use the lack of civil monetary penalties for breaking labor law to their advantage and interfere with workers’ right to organize with little to no repercussions. Today, employers continue to engage in aggressive, coercive, and intimidating opposition toward workers’ efforts to unionize. EPI research estimates that employers are charged with violating federal law in 41.5% of all union election campaigns (McNicholas et al. 2019).

The organizing effort at Starbucks stores is a prime example of how employers are willing to break labor law. Since December 2021, more than 370 Starbucks stores in 42 states have voted in favor of unionizing (More Perfect Union 2023). Over the last two years, the National Labor Relations Board has fielded hundreds of unfair labor practice charges from Starbucks workers and from Starbucks Workers United (Jamieson 2023). Further, employers spend more than $400 million a year on consultants to dissuade and weaken workers’ unionization efforts (McNicholas 2023). In the case of Starbucks, the company has retained Littler Mendelson, a law firm notorious for its union avoidance services (Wise and Iafolla 2023).

As a result of the growing employer opposition to unions and the failure of policy to stem it, workers are unable to organize new union members fast enough under current labor law to keep pace with the natural “churning out” of unionized jobs. Every year in the U.S. economy—even during times when the aggregate economy is healthy—hundreds of thousands of establishments close, leading to millions of workers losing their jobs (BLS 2023d). Some of these business closings and employment losses fall on unionized workers. When the economy is healthy, hundreds of thousands of establishments also open each year, leading to millions of workers finding new jobs. However, employer hostility and our dysfunctional system of labor law keeps new jobs from becoming unionized at anywhere near the rate at which unionized jobs are disappearing.

In the private sector, workers can form a union in two ways: They can ask their employer to voluntarily recognize their union (after a majority of workers have indicated interest in unionizing), or they can file a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB election process can be lengthy and can involve employer interference.

The breakdown of the National Labor Relations Board election process as a tool that protects workers’ rights to unionize can be seen along two broad dimensions—far fewer workers have been participating in NLRB elections in recent decades and the share of elections resulting in a win for unions declined substantially from 1951 to 2000. While the win rate for workers who managed to force an NLRB election began increasing a bit after 2000—and has risen substantially in more recent years—the share of workers participating in an NLRB election has remained radically lower than it was in the mid to late 20th century (Mishel, Rhinehart, and Windham 2020). This decline in union election activity meant fewer new union members entering the labor market. As a result, the natural job losses that are part of the labor market’s churn every year reduce unionization rates as union jobs are lost and there is no effective mechanism to replace the lost unionized jobs with new unionized jobs.

Policies in many states continue to suppress union membership

As noted above, union membership levels vary widely among states.

Figure A

State policies continue to play centrally important roles in shaping union membership levels. Occupational carveouts in federal labor law leave millions of public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers without union rights unless states act. And even for private-sector workers covered under the National Labor Relations Act, the passage of Taft-Hartley in 1947 has allowed states to constrain (but not expand) workers’ collective bargaining rights through so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) laws.

State RTW laws first emerged as part of anti-union industry campaigns to suppress multiracial worker organizing and maintain Jim Crow labor relations in Southern states following the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. RTW laws are designed to diminish workers’ collective power by prohibiting unions and employers from negotiating union security clauses into collective bargaining agreements, making it harder for workers to join, form, and sustain unions (Cooper and Wolfe 2021; Sherer and Gould 2023). As a result, states with RTW laws have lower unionization rates and higher income inequality, and workers in RTW states on average have lower wages and benefits (Fortin, Lemieux, and Lloyd 2022).

Most state RTW laws were adopted in the mid-20th century in Southern, Midwestern, and Western states. But in the past decade five additional states with historically higher unionization rates—Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—adopted RTW laws, newly limiting workers’ collective bargaining rights in those states.5 These five new RTW states joined 22 states that already had RTW laws in place. Then in 2023, Michigan became the first of these states to repeal its RTW law.

Figure B

Data show unionization declined far faster than the national average in the states that adopted RTW in the past decade, falling 3.8 percentage points between 2010 and 2023. By 2023, unionization rates were 5.0% in states that had adopted RTW prior to 2010, 9.7% in states that adopted RTW after 2010, and 14.3% in non-RTW states.

Figure C

A decade of attacks on public employees has weakened public-sector labor laws, creating major barriers to union membership in many states

Federal labor law excludes public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers from coverage, as well as supervisors and independent contractors. This leaves states to set policy on union and collective bargaining rights for these occupations. As a result, collective bargaining rights for different types of public employees vary widely both across and within states (Morrissey and Sherer 2022), while farmworkers and domestic workers (including millions of direct home care and child care workers) continue to lack collective bargaining rights in all but a few contexts (National Agricultural Law Center 2023; Zundl and Rodgers 2021).

Overall, the public sector has remained more heavily unionized than the private sector in recent decades, but these numbers mask enormous differences across states. State variations in unionization rates are highly correlated with vast differences in state policies on collective bargaining rights, which vary widely across and even within states for different types of public employees. Currently, some states maintain public employee collective bargaining laws with provisions somewhat similar to those covering private-sector workers under federal law, while other states completely prohibit public employees and employers from entering into collective bargaining agreements, and more than half of states lack comprehensive collective bargaining laws for public-sector workers (McNicholas et al. 2020).

Figure D illustrates the highly predictive relationship between the strength (or weakness) of state policies on public sector collective bargaining, and rates of unionization among local government workers.

Figure D

Recently, a few states (including Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Virginia) have taken important steps to establish or expand collective bargaining rights for some public employees. But in far more states over the past decade, public-sector workers and their unions have faced sustained attacks. For example, following the 2010 midterm elections, EPI analysis documented a clear pattern of cookie-cutter anti-union bills introduced in state legislatures and driven largely by politics rather than economics (Lafer 2013). These bills were supported by a network of wealthy individuals and corporate-backed lobby groups including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). These legislative proposals aimed to change state labor policies in ways that would result in lower public-sector unionization rates and limit the collective power of workers (Hertel-Fernandez 2014).

In 2011, newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker championed passage of Act 10, legislation designed to severely limit public employee union rights in a state that for decades had in place a strong statutory framework for public-sector collective bargaining and relatively high overall unionization rates. Act 10’s sweeping changes nullified existing public-sector collective bargaining agreements across the state and created numerous administrative barriers to maintaining union membership. Among other changes, Act 10 prohibited negotiations on any subject other than base wages (while capping negotiated increases at the rate of inflation), outlawed fair share fees or payroll deduction of union dues, and required a new state-administered election each year in order for a local union to maintain legal certification (University of Wisconsin-Madison 2019).

Following Wisconsin’s example, since 2011 Republican statehouse majorities in at least a dozen more states have passed legislation to substantially restrict or prohibit collective bargaining rights of some or all public-sector workers. In a handful of these states, such legislative attacks were blocked by voter referendum or court action, or later reversed by additional legislative action to restore aspects of public-sector workers’ rights stripped during this wave of attacks (Morrissey and Sherer 2022). Yet overall, public-sector workers in multiple states across the country today have far fewer protections to unionize and collectively bargain than they did in 2010. And over a decade after passage, laws like Wisconsin’s Act 10 have begun to show devastating impacts on worker wages, public education, and unionization levels (Wisconsin Watch 2022; University of Wisconsin-Madison 2019; Garcia and Han 2021).

Since 2010, the same constellation of anti-union organizations has prioritized litigation attempting to erode public employee union rights in multiple states—including a suit filed to weaken Illinois’s public-sector union laws, which in 2018 became the Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. In this case the court ruled that public-sector unions across the country could no longer negotiate union security agreements requiring all workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement to pay agency fees to cover the costs of representation (McNicholas and Shierholz 2018). Though the Janus decision did not immediately have the predicted effect of reducing union membership in states where fair share fees had previously been legal, it has forced unions to expend additional resources on outreach efforts in those states while simultaneously responding to multiple legislative attacks on members’ rights in other states (McNicholas, Shierholz, and Poydock 2021).

In the past year, these attacks have continued and, in some states, intensified. In 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis prioritized intertwined attacks on public education and public educators, promoting a package of legislative proposals aimed at eroding public employees’ union rights (Governor Ron DeSantis 2023). In May, DeSantis signed into law SB 256, a bill filled with numerous new legal and administrative hurdles intended to make it difficult for Florida public employees to join or sustain unions. For example, the new law bans workers from paying their union dues via payroll deduction (making it harder to maintain or document membership levels from month to month) while at the same time requiring that each local public employee union submit evidence that a 60% supermajority of eligible employees is paying dues in order to maintain a legal certification from the state.6

A related factor contributing to decreases in unionization rates in the past decade and a half is the extremely weak growth in overall public-sector employment. In the wake of the Great Recession, many state and local governments slashed budgets and made deep cuts to staffing that have never been fully restored in the sense of returning to their former level relative to the size of the population. Coming out of the more recent pandemic recession, private-sector job recovery has been strong, and employment levels now exceed pre-pandemic levels. In contrast, state and local government employment did not recover to pre-pandemic levels until the very end of 2023 (EPI 2024). Given that during this period the U.S. population increased 1.2%, it would take another 274,000 state and local government jobs to restore state and local public employment to pre-pandemic levels on a per capita basis. And of course, even a return to pre-pandemic levels will not restore the shortfall in state and local government jobs still remaining from the Great Recession. 

Policy solutions

Policy change is necessary to provide U.S. workers a meaningful right to a union and collective bargaining. High-profile organizing campaigns at Amazon and Starbucks have exposed the reality of a broken and undemocratic union election system where workers are routinely coerced, threatened, and retaliated against for supporting a union. Under the most conservative measures, employers are charged with illegally firing workers in one-fifth of all elections. Using more comprehensive measures, employers are charged with illegally firing workers in nearly a third of all NLRB-supervised elections (McNicholas et al. 2019). Labor law should not give employers the power to require U.S. workers to win a union only through a broken election process that leaves workers vulnerable to intimidation, harassment, and illegal firing.The law should be changed to require that when a majority of employees have signed authorizations designating the union as its bargaining representative, the union will be certified by the NLRB.

When workers win unions, they should be able to bargain a first contract fairly and in a timely manner. Employers routinely try to delay negotiating in an effort to weaken union support in the hopes of decertifying the union (McNicholas, Poydock, and Schmitt 2023). A recent study found that the average time-to-contract was 465 days—or well over a year. And an analysis of data from 2020–2022 found that the mean time to contract ratification was over 500 days (Combs 2022). In the case of Starbucks, none of the more than 370 unionized stores has reached a first contract after two years of organizing. Only recently has Starbucks announced that they wanted to resume talks with the union and reach a contract in 2024 (Lucas 2023). The law should provide a mediation and binding arbitration process when employers are refusing to bargain in good faith.

Employers should not be permitted to violate with impunity their workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively. Under current law, there are no civil monetary penalties for employers who violate labor law. So, there is little incentive for companies to follow the law and respect workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively. Labor law should be changed to provide civil penalties for violating the law. These penalties should be commensurate to penalties associated with violations of financial and corporate law (McNicholas et al. 2021).

The law should be changed to provide workers whose rights are violated a meaningful remedy. Current law requires only that an illegally discharged worker receive backpay—minus any earnings they receive from other employment. The National Labor Relations Act should be amended to allow for treble damages for workers who are illegally discharged.

At the federal level, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act provides for most of the reforms outlined here and would strengthen private-sector workers’ right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. The Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act guarantees public-sector workers the right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.

States also have important roles to play. More states should restore private-sector workers’ full bargaining rights by repealing so-called right-to-work laws, as Michigan did in 2023. States can further safeguard workers’ basic union rights from ongoing political attacks with constitutional language like the Workers’ Rights Amendment approved by Illinois voters in 2022 (Sherer 2022).

Every state has room to improve policies applying to workers in occupations left out of federal labor law who lack a clear legal pathway to winning a union contract. Millions of agricultural and domestic workers remain wholly excluded from collective bargaining laws except in states that have passed legislation to specifically cover them. Currently, more than half of U.S. states lack comprehensive collective bargaining laws for state and local public-sector workers (Morrissey and Sherer 2022). While a few states have made progress on improving aspects of public employee collective bargaining laws in recent years, a larger number of states significantly weakened their existing laws. States must cease attacks on public-employee union rights and prioritize ensuring that all workers, regardless of occupation, have rights at least equivalent to those guaranteed to private-sector workers under federal law.

To generate an economy that works for everyone, workers must be able to win unions. Policy changes at the federal and state levels are crucial to restoring a fair balance of power between workers and employers. Congress and state legislatures must institute policies that promote the right to union representation and collective bargaining.

Notes

1. For consistency, the employment change here refers to the change in employment of wage and salary workers in the Current Population Survey, the survey used to calculate union membership. “Wage and salary workers” include employees in both the private and public sector, and exclude self-employed workers and unpaid family workers. 

2. These numbers are our own calculations from Current Population Survey microdata (EPI 2023b). We used our own calculations in this sentence only, in order to create nonoverlapping categories of “workers of color” and “white workers.” BLS’s race/ethnicity categorizations overlap—for example, white Hispanic workers are counted as both white and Hispanic—so do not allow for the desired breakdown. All other numbers cited are BLS’s published calculations.

3. Gallup polls indicate that public approval of unions grew from 61% to 67% between 2017 and 2023 (Saad 2023). (Note that the share of the public who approves of unions is related to—but not the same measure as—the share of nonunionized workers who would join a union if they could.)

4. See Figure 1 in Romero and Whittaker 2023.

5. In 2017 Missouri also enacted a so-called “right-to-work” law, but it was overturned by a 2018 voter referendum before taking effect.

6. CS/CS/SB 256 (2023)

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For decades, Michigan boasted the highest unionization rate in the country—and relatively higher median wages resulted for the state’s workers. In this blog post, we find that as recently as 2005, Michigan’s unionization rate was 1.69 times the national rate, and the state’s median wage was 6% higher than the national median.

But after lawmakers passed RTW in 2012, Michigan’s unionization rates declined faster than in the nation as a whole, and the state’s relative median wage fell below the U.S. median. Attacks on Michigan workers’ rights have especially benefited the rich—declines in unionization rates have been accompanied by dramatic increases in income inequality, with half of all income in the state now going to the top 10%.

The repeal of RTW in Michigan—in tandem with Illinois voters approving a constitutional Workers’ Rights Amendment (which bans future RTW laws) in 2022 and Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejecting their legislature’s attempt to impose RTW restrictions in 2018—would also signal an important turning point after a decade of extreme anti-union state legislation in the Midwest that has suppressed wages and eroded job quality.

So-called right-to-work laws perpetuate inequality and result in lower wages and benefits for all workers

As Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out in 1961, “right-to-work” is a “false slogan” because RTW laws provide neither rights nor work, and are in fact designed “to rob us of our civil rights and job rights [and] to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.” Decades later, research bears out King’s contention that “wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower.”

RTW laws are designed to diminish workers’ collective power by prohibiting unions and employers from negotiating union security agreements into collective bargaining agreements, making it harder for workers to form, join, and sustain unions. As a result, states with RTW laws generally have lower unionization rates than non-RTW states. Even after controlling for other factors that can be related to unionization (such as industry, occupation, education, age, gender, race, ethnicity, and foreign-born status), private-sector workers in RTW states are less likely to be covered by a union contract than peers in non-RTW states.

Consequently, workers in states with RTW laws have lower wages, reduced access to health and retirement benefits, and higher workplace fatality rates. Both unionized and nonunionized workers in RTW states are paid 3.1% less, on average, than workers with similar characteristics in non-RTW states, according to previous EPI research. Figure A illustrates that unionized workers are 58% more likely to have employment-provided health insurance and 65% more likely to have employment-provided retirement benefits than their nonunion counterparts.

Figure A

RTW laws are historically rooted in racism and designed to maintain unequal power. When private-sector workers first gained legal protection to unionize after the passage of the federal National Labor Relations Act in 1935, unionization rates grew quickly (see Figure B). In response, anti-union, explicitly white supremacist campaigns to limit worker power and maintain Jim Crow labor relations pursued state legislation as a means to constrain workers’ newly won federal union rights via RTW policies, initially in Southern and Western states. These restrictions on collective bargaining rights have since spread to 27 states and continue to generate economic outcomes that disadvantage all workers.

State policies that reverse these legacies and empower all workers to unionize and collectively bargain should be considered top priorities for legislators in Michigan and across the country because they are fundamentally linked to key economic and labor market outcomes. Data show that unions reduce income inequality across the economy, counteract racial and gender labor market inequities, and reduce public-sector pay gaps.

By weakening unions, ‘right-to-work’ laws fuel economic inequality—especially in Michigan

Through bringing workers’ collective power to the bargaining table, unions are able to win better wages and benefits for working people—reducing income inequality as a result. In decades when union density was higher, there was less income inequality (measured as the share of income going just to the top 10%) than there is today, as seen in Figure B. But as unionization rates declined—particularly after 1979—income inequality worsened.

Figure B

Similarly, declining unionization rates in Michigan have been accompanied by a rising share of income accruing to the top 10%, but Michigan’s income inequality has become even more extreme than nationally. Figure C shows that declines in Michigan’s union membership rate since 1978 were accompanied by a stark increase in income inequality, with the share of income going to the top 10% growing from one-third to now half of all income in the state.

Figure C

Michigan used to boast the highest unionization rate in the country. In 1978, 34.9% of Michigan workers were union members, placing its unionization rate at 1.55 times the national average (as shown in Figure D). As recently as 2005, Michigan’s unionization rate was 1.69 times the national rate. During those same periods, median wages in Michigan were about 6% higher than the national median. But in the past decade, unionization rates in Michigan fell faster than in the nation as a whole, and the state’s relative median wage fell along with it. Today, Michigan’s median wage has fallen below the U.S. median.

Figure D

‘Right-to-work’ laws erode job quality but have no measurable impact on job growth

Despite persistent claims from RTW proponents that weakening unions will lead to state job growth, comparisons of RTW and non-RTW states over decades show no relationship between employment levels and RTW laws.

Figure E illustrates the employment-to-population ratio—the share of workers ages 25–54 with a job—among three sets of states: those that have remained non-RTW, those that adopted RTW before 2010, and those that adopted RTW after 2010. The prime-age employment-to-population ratios among these states reveal no clear differences. There are no measurable employment advantages between RTW or non-RTW states.

Figure E

Prior studies have likewise shown no causal link between a state’s RTW status and its job growth. For example, studies of Oklahoma after the state enacted RTW in 2001 found a significant reduction in private-sector unionization, but no measurable effect on employment growth. Similarly, researchers at the University of Kentucky examined state economic performance across Southern U.S. states from 1964 to 2004 and found that RTW status had no relationship to state economic outcomes. When studies have claimed to find such effects, it is often due to failure to control for other critical factors such as education levels of the workforce, proximity to transportation hubs, advances in technology, or natural resources.

Michigan can lead the way to restoring worker power and democracy after a decade of attacks in Midwestern states

The very need for Michigan to take special action to restore workers’ union rights is a reminder that for too many U.S. workers, the internationally recognized human rights to organize and collectively bargain are either entirely off limits under broken federal labor laws or restricted by a patchwork of state statutes (RTW among them) left to shifting political whims of legislative leaders.

During the past decade, corporate-backed lobby groups have waged an attack on workers’ rights in Michigan and neighboring states by pushing to weaken public-sector workers’ collective bargaining rights, repeal state prevailing wage laws, and pass RTW legislation. Following the 2010 midterm elections, newly elected Republican governors and legislative majorities prioritized these and other forms of extreme anti-union state legislation—especially in the Midwest. EPI analysis at the time documented a clear pattern of cookie-cutter, anti-union bills introduced in multiple state legislatures and driven largely by politics rather than economics. Backed by a network of wealthy individuals and industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), these state legislative attacks focused on undermining worker power in both the public and the private sectors.

In 2011–2012, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana joined Michigan in passing legislation to substantially restrict collective bargaining rights of public-sector workers. During the same period, 19 states introduced RTW legislation, and Indiana joined Michigan in passing a RTW law. Within the next five years, Republican-majority legislatures in Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wisconsin all passed RTW laws (in Missouri, voters restored full bargaining rights for covered private-sector workers by repealing the new RTW law via a 2018 ballot initiative).

As illustrated in Figure F, 27 states now have RTW laws on the books. The majority of these RTW laws were enacted in Southern and Western states in the mid-twentieth century, but after 2010, five states—all in the central U.S.—have newly adopted RTW laws.

Figure F

Figure G shows the losses in unionization broken down by RTW status, differentiating among the states shown above that adopted RTW either before or after 2010. Unionization has declined far more sharply in the states that adopted RTW most recently, falling 3.8 percentage points between 2010 and 2022. By 2022, unionization rates were 4.8% in states that had adopted RTW prior to 2010, 9.7% in states that adopted RTW after 2010, and 14.6% in non-RTW states.

Figure G

The steep declines in unionization rates in Michigan and other states that adopted RTW in the past decade (often as part of a package of multiple anti-union legislative changes) have devastating and multi-faceted impacts for workers. By lowering the share of workers who have union coverage, RTW laws weaken workers’ bargaining power and allow business owners and corporate shareholders to capture more of the income generated by firms, resulting in lower wages and benefits.

All workers experience a wage disadvantage in states where RTW laws are in place, and data show these disparities are especially pronounced for women and workers of color (who make up two-thirds of today’s union workers). When unions are strong, they improve wages and benefits for all workers (not just those in unions) and reduce racial and gender wage gaps, helping to counteract disparate outcomes resulting from occupational segregation and discrimination in the labor market. When unions are weak, women and workers of color have less hope of working under a union contract, where equal pay for equal work and non-discrimination protections are enforceable guarantees.

Because unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work, states that constrain worker bargaining power end up with less equitable economies and less robust democratic participation from voters. Disparities in worker power across states shape the quality of life, the strength of democracy, and the well-being of all workers, unionized or not. Workers who live in states with higher levels of unionization not only earn higher average wages, but also are more likely to have access to unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and paid family and medical leave than workers in states with lower union densities. Likewise, strong correlations between state-level voting restrictions and low union density show that the future of state-level democracy is itself linked to strengthening workers’ ability to exercise basic rights to organize and collectively bargain.

Repealing RTW and restoring prevailing wage laws are critical steps to rebuilding worker power and reversing this economic damage, but much more remains to be done. Far too many U.S. workers still lack any legal pathway to a union contract, and until Congress enacts major federal labor law reforms, states like Michigan must continue to take the lead on ensuring all workers—including the millions of public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers who are otherwise excluded from federal labor law—have full union rights. 

At a moment of historic inequality and record corporate profits, it is no surprise we are also seeing historically high levels of approval for unions. Workers are looking to unions as critical vehicles for fixing what’s broken at work and in our wildly unequal economy. The large gap between the share of workers who want a union and the share of workers who are in a union underscores that our system of weak federal labor laws, which are further undermined by RTW measures in over half of U.S. states, is not working. Fundamental reform is required to rebuild an economy that guarantees all workers the freedom to unionize and collectively bargain, and no longer leaves most workers behind.

Past generations of Michigan workers birthed industrial unions that turned poverty-wage factory jobs into living-wage careers, transformed the nation’s manufacturing sector, and sustained worker-led multiracial organizations that laid a foundation for 20^th-century civil rights and women’s rights movements. Repeal of RTW in Michigan is a crucial first step to ensuring that current generations of workers have the same chance to come together to reinvigorate our democracy, confront new forms of 21^st-century inequality, and restore a fair balance of power to our economy.

The Illinois Workers’ Rights Amendment adds language to the state constitution affirming that “employees shall have the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions, and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work.” The new clause also specifies that “no law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.”

The amendment’s expansive language creates a legal backstop against two persistent lines of state legislative attack on U.S. workers’ basic rights to unionize: 1) threats to repeal or erode public-sector workers’ collective bargaining rights, and 2) threats to constrain private-sector workers’ collective bargaining rights with so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) restrictions that prohibit unions and employers from negotiating union security agreements into union contracts. Just as importantly, the Illinois Workers’ Rights Amendment opens up promising new pathways for additional groups of long-excluded workers to unionize and pursue collective bargaining with their employers.

Heading into 2023, state legislators in the Midwest and across the country should follow Illinois’ example by restoring workers’ rights after a decade under threat from extreme anti-union state legislation that has already suppressed wages and eroded job quality in many states. Long-overdue action to remove existing restrictions and affirmatively extend union rights to all workers is a first, essential policy step states can take to reverse growing inequality and end long-standing racist and sexist occupational exclusions in existing labor law.

Ensuring full bargaining rights to all workers requires state action because of gaps, weaknesses, and racist exclusions in federal law

Federal law protects bargaining rights of most private-sector workers through the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Yet, states continue to play centrally important roles in shaping worker power both because occupational carveouts in federal labor law leave millions without union rights unless states act, and because even for workers who are covered under the NLRA, Congress has long allowed states to constrain (but not expand) bargaining rights through so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) laws.

The NLRA excludes public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers from coverage, as well as supervisors and independent contractors, leaving states to set policy on union and collective bargaining rights for these occupations. As a result, collective bargaining rights for various types of public employees vary widely both across and within states, while farmworkers and domestic workers (including millions of direct home care and child care workers) continue to lack collective bargaining rights in all but a few contexts.

These gaps, weaknesses, and exclusions in U.S. labor law are rooted in racism and perpetuate economic, racial, and gender inequality. Following the passage of the NLRA, anti-union, explicitly white supremacist campaigns to limit worker power and maintain Jim Crow labor relations focused on state legislation as a means to constrain union rights via RTW policies, initially in Southern and Western states. These restrictions on collective bargaining rights have since spread to 27 states, and are themselves enshrined in nine states’ constitutions (now including Tennessee, where voters approved a new constitutional amendment on election day 2022).

Illinois’ broadly worded new Workers’ Rights Amendment both affirms the collective bargaining rights of all employees, regardless of occupation or sector, and explicitly prohibits RTW-style legislation that limits bargaining rights. Every progressive state policymaker’s agenda in 2023 should start with taking similar steps to put an end to labor law’s existing gaps and exclusions by guaranteeing full union rights for all workers, regardless of occupation, race, gender, or geography.

State worker power policies that guarantee workers’ collective bargaining rights should be considered top priorities for legislators because they are fundamentally linked to economic and labor market outcomes. Workers in states with stronger collective bargaining rights and higher union density tend to have higher wages than their counterparts in states with weak public-sector bargaining rights or RTW restrictions on private-sector bargaining. Proponents of the Workers’ Rights Amendment pointed out that Illinois workers earn higher wages on average and are also 5% more likely to have health insurance coverage and 32% less likely to die on the job than counterparts in states that constrain collective bargaining rights. Moreover, unions reduce income inequality across the economy, counteract racial and gender labor market inequities, and reduce public-sector pay gaps.

Illinois is at the epicenter of Midwest battles over the future of worker power

The Workers’ Rights Amendment victory marks a decisive response and a potential turning point after over a decade of attacks on workers in Midwestern states where, following the 2010 midterm elections, newly elected Republican governors and legislative majorities prioritized extreme anti-union legislation and litigation. EPI analysis at the time documented a clear pattern of cookie-cutter, anti-union bills introduced in multiple state legislatures and driven largely by politics rather than economics. Backed by a network of wealthy individuals and corporate-backed lobby groups including the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), these state legislative attacks focused on undermining worker power in both the public and the private sector.

In 2011, newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker championed passage of Act 10, legislation designed to severely limit public employee collective bargaining rights in a state that had for decades had a strong statutory framework in place obligating public employers to bargain in good faith with employee unions. Act 10’s sweeping changes nullified existing public-sector collective bargaining agreements across the state and stripped away decades of bargaining history. Among other changes, Act 10 prohibited negotiations on any subject other than base wages (while capping negotiated increases at the rate of inflation), outlawed fair share fees or payroll deduction of union dues, and required unions to hold a new election each year in order to maintain legal certification.

Within the next two years, Republican statehouse majorities in states including Ohio, Indiana, Michigan also passed legislation to substantially restrict or prohibit collective bargaining rights of public-sector workers.

Figure A

Ohio voters were able to quickly restore public-sector bargaining rights via a 2011 ballot initiative, but major new constraints on bargaining rights remain in place in multiple other states. A decade after passage, laws like Wisconsin’s Act 10 are showing devastating impacts on worker wages, union density, and public education.

In 2017–2018, a second wave of newly elected Republican majorities in Illinois’ neighbor states of Iowa and Missouri took steps to limit the rights of public-sector workers, including unprecedented sweeping changes to state collective bargaining law in Iowa that emulated much of Wisconsin’s Act 10.

Throughout this period, the same constellation of corporate-backed lobby groups waged a patterned attack on private-sector workers’ rights by pushing for as many states as possible to repeal state prevailing wage laws and pass so-called “right-to-work” (RTW) legislation. In 2010, among Illinois’ five neighboring states, only Iowa had a RTW law on the books (dating back to 1947). In 2011–2012, 19 states introduced RTW legislation, and both Indiana and Michigan passed RTW laws in 2012. Within the next five years, Republican-majority legislatures in Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wisconsin all passed RTW laws. By decade’s end, Illinois was surrounded on all sides by RTW states with the exception of Missouri, where voters restored full bargaining rights for covered private-sector workers by repealing the state’s new RTW law via a 2018 ballot initiative.

Figure B

Meanwhile in Illinois, anti-union attacks during this same period included changes to state law limiting teachers’ right to strike, litigation that led to a major U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting public employee bargaining rights across the country, and attempts to pass local RTW ordinances. In 2011, the Democratic-majority Illinois legislature passed SB7, a controversial package of education “reforms” that included new restrictions on the right to strike aimed exclusively at diminishing the power of the Chicago Teachers Union by raising the threshold for a legal strike vote to 75% of all members.

When Republican Bruce Rauner was elected Illinois governor in 2014, he prioritized similar anti-union attacks, starting with an executive order aimed at invalidating public-sector union contract language on non-member “fair share” fees and a lawsuit claiming such contractual agreements were unconstitutional. Rauner’s lawsuit became Janus v. AFSCME, a notorious case that corporate-backed, right-wing legal foundations supported all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned decades of labor law precedent in a ruling that barred public employees and employers across the country from negotiating agreements on payment of agency or “fair share” fees.

Rauner simultaneously encouraged Illinois cities and counties to create what he perversely called “employee empowerment zones” via local ordinances intended to invalidate union security language in private-sector union contracts, attempting to impose RTW conditions on private-sector unions and employers at the local level. The single local RTW ordinance adopted in Illinois was later struck down in federal court, but the persistent and cumulative threats to union bargaining rights hit home for public- and private-sector workers across the state.

Illinoisans who championed this year’s Workers’ Rights Amendment appealed to voters with reminders that without constitutional protection, similar threats to basic rights could easily recur in the future. State Senator and amendment sponsor Ram Villivalam said he was motivated to provide “stability and certainty” to Illinois workers because even if RTW legislation is not a current threat, “future politicians can be different than the ones we have today.” State labor leaders said the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Dobbs decision also became a factor, as a stark reminder to voters of how easily even long-standing, fundamental rights can be taken away.

Weak laws in other Midwestern states will continue to diminish worker power unless policymakers take action

The intended effect of RTW laws is to diminish workers’ collective power by restricting collective bargaining rights and making it harder for workers to form, join, and sustain unions. As a result, states with RTW laws generally have lower unionization rates than non-RTW states. Even after controlling for other factors that can be related to unionization (such as industry, occupation, education, age, gender, race, ethnicity, and foreign-born status), private-sector workers in RTW states are less likely to be covered by a union contract than peers in non-RTW states.

Mirroring this pattern, workers in Midwestern states neighboring Illinois that have passed RTW laws are significantly less likely to be covered by a union contract. While 15% of Illinois workers are covered by a union contract, only 9.5% of workers in neighboring RTW states are covered. In the private sector, 9.5% of Illinois workers have union coverage, compared with only 6.7% of workers in RTW states bordering Illinois.

Figure C

By lowering the share of workers who have union coverage, RTW laws weaken workers’ bargaining power and allow business owners and corporate shareholders to capture more of the income generated by firms, resulting in lower wages and benefits. All workers experience a wage disadvantage in states where RTW laws are in place, and data show these disparities are especially pronounced for women and workers of color.

Because unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work, states that constrain worker bargaining power end up with less equitable economies and less robust democratic participation from voters. Disparities in worker power across states shape the quality of life, the strength of democracy, and the well-being of all workers, unionized or not. Workers who live in states with higher levels of unionization not only earn higher average wages, but also are more likely to have access to unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and paid family and medical leave than workers in states with lower union densities. Likewise, strong correlations between state-level voting restrictions and low union density show that the future of state-level democracy is itself linked to strengthening workers’ ability to exercise basic rights to organize and collectively bargain.

Potential impact of Illinois amendment illustrates why states must act to guarantee workers’ rights and build worker power

The very need for a state-level Workers’ Rights Amendment is a reminder that for too many U.S. workers, the fundamental, internationally recognized human rights to organize and collectively bargain are off limits entirely under broken federal labor laws or are governed by a wildly variable patchwork of vulnerable state statutes left to shifting political whims of legislative leaders.

Illinois’ state constitution is now the first to explicitly prohibit “any new law that interferes with, negates, or diminishes” the right to organize and collectively bargain, but it’s not the first to enshrine collective bargaining rights.

Given the gaps and limitations of federal labor law, state constitutional language has proven important both to expanding and sometimes defending basic workers’ rights in other states. In neighboring Missouri, for example, constitutional language has been critical both for realizing public-sector collective bargaining rights (via a 2007 court ruling) and for defending them against legislative attacks. After Missouri legislators tried to place extreme Wisconsin-style constraints on public-sector unions, state constitutional language guaranteeing Missouri workers’ union rights helped win a 2021 state supreme court decision overturning the new law.

The Illinois Workers’ Rights Amendment opens the door for new groups of formerly excluded workers to unionize and press for stronger legal protections to do so. Similar constitutional guarantees have already helped workers challenge their exclusion from labor law in other states. In New York, farmworkers reversed their long-standing exclusion from a New York state labor law when a 2019 state appellate court ruled that all workers have a right to collectively bargain under the state constitution. Just two months later, New York passed a state law creating a framework obligating agricultural employers to bargain in good faith with farmworkers who unionize, and last year certified the state’s first farmworker union. Similarly, the Supreme Court of New Jersey has ruled that state constitutional language guaranteeing collective bargaining rights carries an obligation for employers to recognize and bargain with farmworkers who unionize.

It remains to be seen how workers formerly excluded from labor law protections might make use of new constitutional rights in Illinois. The amendment lays a solid foundation for workers regardless of occupation to exercise and vigorously defend their rights to unionize at work, and, if necessary, in the courts and the state legislature. Among groups of Illinois workers who could look to new protections to bolster their ongoing organizing are domestic workers who’ve already gained important new labor standards (but not collective bargaining rights) via both state and local Domestic Workers Bills of Rights laws, and Chicago Uber and Lyft drivers currently organizing for better wages and safety protections via city ordinance.

The amendment also may provide essential permanent protection to groups of private-sector workers such as graduate teaching and research assistants, whose status under federal labor law has been otherwise historically precarious and left to shifting opinions of National Labor Relations Board appointees. Unions representing thousands of graduate employees currently unionizing on private university campuses in Illinois were among those active in endorsing the amendment for this reason.

With or without constitutional language in place, now is the moment for state legislators to follow Illinois’ example and empower workers to build (and rebuild) unions, especially in states where a decade of anti-union policy attacks has lowered wages and deepened inequality. Some Michigan legislators are already announcing interest in proposing a repeal of the state’s RTW law, for example. Congress could, of course, take major steps toward restoring and expanding bargaining rights nationwide with passage of bills like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, and a federal Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

But until Congress enacts such major federal labor law reforms, states must take the lead on ensuring all workers have full union and collective bargaining rights. States with collective bargaining statutes in place can strengthen and expand them, and states yet to act can take steps to ensure full rights for the millions of public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers who are otherwise excluded from federal labor law. At a moment of historically high approval for unions, voters across the country are looking to unions as critical vehicles for fixing what’s broken at work and in our wildly unequal economy. Far too many U.S. workers still lack any legal pathway to a union contract, and it’s time for state policymakers to follow Illinois in making sure they have one.

Though much work remains to be done to enact a progressive economic agenda, this midterm election showed clear signs of support for a policy agenda that prioritizes economic, racial, and gender justice for working families.

Minimum wage

Nebraska: Voters approved Initiative 433, which will increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2026.

Nevada: Voters approved Question 2, which will increase the state’s minimum wage to $12 in July 2024. The measure also removed a provision that allows employers to pay workers $1 less if they offer health insurance.

Tipped minimum wage

Voters in Washington, D.C. and Portland, Maine considered ballot measure to eliminate the subminimum wage for tipped workers. The tipped minimum wage system, which allows employers to pay workers well below the minimum wage, is a legacy of slavery and disproportionately harms workers of color and women. Over 3 million tipped workers nationwide are paid below their state’s minimum wage for as little as $2.13 an hour. Meanwhile, workers in states with one fair wage have higher take-home pay and are less likely to live in poverty than workers in states that pay tipped workers the federal minimum of $2.13.

Washington, D.C.: Voters approved Initiative 82, eliminating the subminimum wage and raising the wage floor for tipped workers from $5.35 to $16.10 by 2027. A similar initiative was passed in 2018 but was overturned by the D.C. City Council and Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Portland, Maine: Voters rejected Question D, which would have raised the overall minimum wage to $18 by 2025 and eliminated the subminimum wage for tipped work. The measure would have also classified app-based workers as employees and established a Department of Fair Labor Practices to investigate and enforce labor standards at the city level. The Maine Center for Economic Policy, a partner of EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), estimates that over a third of Maine workers would have earned higher wages as a result of the change. An increased minimum wage would have primarily benefited women and workers of color in the state.

Workers’ rights

New York: Voters approved the Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022, which establishes prevailing wage standards on construction projects. The bill also allows the state and municipalities to require contractors to execute labor peace agreements and buy American for structural iron and steel.

Illinois: Voters approved Amendment 1, which will prevent lawmakers from passing so-called “right-to-work” laws and give workers a constitutional right to collectively bargain over wages, hours, and working conditions.

However, in Tennessee, so-called “right-to-work” was further entrenched at the ballot box. Voters approved Amendment 1, enshrining “right-to-work” in the state’s constitution and making efforts to repeal the law much more difficult. EPI research has shown that states with so-called “right-to-work” laws, which are designed to weaken unions financially, have lower wages for both unionized and nonunionized workers than states without such laws.

Free school meals

Colorado: Voters approved Proposition FF to provide free meals for all public school students in the state. The measure, which will also fund pay increases for school cafeteria workers, will be funded by limiting state income tax deductions by households earning more than $300,000 annually. Colorado Fiscal Institute, an EARN partner, called the initiative a “fair, equitable” measure that “will boost the physical and economic health of our communities.”

Tax fairness

Massachusetts: Voters approved Question 1, an amendment to the state’s constitution that will increase taxes on the state’s richest residents. The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, an EARN partner, estimates that the tax will generate at least $2 billion a year for investments in public education and affordable transportation.

Health Care

Medicaid Expansion

South Dakota: Voters approved Constitutional Amendment D, which will require the state to provide Medicaid benefits to adults between 18 and 65 with incomes below 133% of the federal poverty level. Though the Affordable Care Act offered to pay 90% of states’ costs to expand Medicaid eligibility, 12 states have yet to expand eligibility. As a result, over 3.5 million people—mostly people of color—lack affordable health care coverage. South Dakota is the seventh state to expand Medicaid through the ballot initiative process. An additional 45,000 South Dakotans will qualify for Medicaid under the expanded program, 14,000 of whom are American Indian.

Abortion

Voters in Kentucky rejected an amendment that would eliminate residents’ right to reproductive freedom and prohibit the use of public funds for abortion. The right to an abortion is a matter of economic security, independence, and mobility for millions of women across the country. People who are denied abortion access are more likely to live in poverty, be unemployed, and face other adverse economic outcomes. Kentucky currently has an abortion plan in place, but the state Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the ban this week. 

California, Michigan, and Vermont voters approved amendments that enshrine reproductive rights, including the rights to contraception and abortion, into the state constitution.

Criminal justice

Constitutional amendments to abolish slavery

Voters in Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, and Alabama approved measures that remove language in their state constitutions permitting slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Louisiana voters rejected a measure to remove language permitting slavery from the constitution after the amendment’s sponsor expressed concerns that the measure’s confusing wording could inadvertently erode protections against slavery. Louisiana voters will consider a revised measure in 2023.

Many state constitutions retain language similar to the 13^th Amendment to the U.S Constitution, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. The Abolish Slavery National Network—which is organizing the effort across the country—and other civil rights advocates argue that extremely low-paid (or, in some cases, unpaid) forced work in American prisons amounts to modern slavery. Incarcerated workers are not only exempt from minimum wage laws but are also denied overtime protection, workplace safety guarantees, and the right to unionize. Supporters see these slavery abolition amendments as an initial step in disrupting the power dynamic between incarcerated workers and prison staff and establishing basic rights for the incarcerated workforce.

Cannabis legalization

Marijuana is now legal to use recreationally in 21 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam. As legalization efforts gain momentum in states across the country, it is critical that lawmakers protect cannabis workers’ collective bargaining rights to ensure that this emerging industry provides safe, good-paying, and community-sustaining jobs.

Maryland: Voters approved Question 4, which permits residents to possess, smoke, and grow marijuana (within limits) and allows the General Assembly to tax the sale of marijuana. Companion legislation to the amendment proposes an expungement process for past marijuana convictions and an assistance fund for small, BIPOC-owned, or woman-owned businesses. Maryland Center on Economic Policy, an EARN partner, estimated that decriminalization would save the state tens of millions of dollars on enforcement costs and that taxing the sale of marijuana would generate hundreds of millions in revenue for the state.

Missouri: Voters approved Amendment 3, which legalizes recreational marijuana and will automatically expunge the records of individuals who were convicted of non-violent marijuana offenses and are not currently incarcerated. Currently incarcerated individuals can petition for release from incarceration, probation, or parole. State advocacy groups estimate that record expungement will impact thousands of Missourians whose marijuana offense convictions limited access to employment, housing, and the social safety net.

Meanwhile, Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota voters rejected marijuana legalization.

Affordable housing

Voters in several states and localities approved measures to fund the construction of affordable housing. As the housing shortage grows and housing becomes increasingly unaffordable, particularly for communities of color and low- to moderate-income families, affordable housing construction has become an especially urgent priority. In Kansas City, voters approved Question 2, which allows the city to spend $50 million over five years to build affordable housing units for low-income residents.

Colorado voters approved the only state-wide affordable housing measure on the ballot this November. Proposition 123 will direct $300 million of the state’s taxable income to help essential workers like teachers and nurses buy homes, as well as help local governments increase housing supply. According to Colorado Fiscal Institute, an EARN partner, minimum wage workers in Colorado would need to work 75 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment.

Los Angeles voters approved Measure LH, which grants the city authority to develop 75,000 units of affordable housing for seniors, unhoused, and low-income residents. Measure ULA, which will raise $1 billion per year for affordable housing and homelessness efforts in the city by taxing property sales over $5 million, also appeared likely to pass as of this writing.

And Austin voters approved Proposition A, the city’s largest ever affordable housing bond. The $350 million bond will be used to build and preserve affordable housing for Austin residents with annual incomes below $61,800.

When given the opportunity, millions of voters across the country showed their support for policies that will strengthen workers’ rights, reproductive justice, and racial equity. Lawmakers at every level of government should take note.

In fact, what is actually under attack is the reinvigorated movement across the United States to engage in dialogue about our country’s continuing legacy of racial hierarchy and oppression—and the policy choices that could finally begin to redress that legacy. And while the campaign against critical race theory is recent, it is merely the latest tool many states have wielded in order to disempower and further disenfranchise Black people as well as cut off any broad-based support for structural reform.

Before the latest right-wing scapegoating tactic, critical race theory was seldom discussed among the general public. It is an academic discourse, mostly taught in law schools, that calls for an examination of our legal system from a racial lens, arguing that the law is not neutral and has been a tool to maintain racial hierarchy.

Conservative attackers fomenting controversy rarely engage with the substance of critical race theory. Instead, they attack any public discussion, organizing movement, policy effort, or—most concerningly—public education that acknowledges that the founding of our nation is rooted in the enslavement of people of African descent for their labor, and the genocide and plunder of Indigenous peoples for their land. They also attack any call for changes in our economic, legal, and cultural domains to address some of these harms that have compounded for centuries.

Historical context

These attacks are the latest examples of white backlash to perceived progress, upward mobility, and equality for Black people. Throughout U.S. history, reactionary politics have always followed periods of potential redemptive transformation. The short—yet significant—period of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War serves as a pivotal example of this. In what the historian Eric Foner calls “this first experiment in genuine interracial democracy in the South,” the Reconstruction era saw transformative voting rights legislation passed as well as the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed equal citizenship to anyone born in the United States.

However, by the end of the 19th century, white backlash ended Reconstruction. The Jim Crow era of racial segregation—legitimized by the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson decision—reigned supreme. Poll taxes and literacy tests replaced the Reconstruction universal male suffrage laws, and the Ku Klux Klan spread in influence and membership. White backlash and violence were prevalent both in periods of economic growth, especially Black economic growth as seen by the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 and others, and in periods of economic downturn, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

This historical context matters because, as the current anti-CRT vitriol shows, these trends continue today. The historical backlash, violence, and racist legislation not only destroyed lives, livelihoods, and wealth at the time, but crucially, cut off wealth-building and intergenerational wealth. White backlash and violence have persistent economic effects and impact current inequality and material wellbeing. Recent scholarship, for example, has shown that areas with high rates of lynchings have lower Black voter registration today.

Legislative fights in the states to censor public education

The attacks against “critical race theory” are not a random occurrence by a few fringe agitators—they are pervasive and insidious state-sponsored attempts to disempower and disenfranchise marginalized and racialized communities. These right-wing attacks have escalated from a mere dog whistle into serious and concerning legislative action and censorship. Several states have passed legislation banning or hindering teachings on the country’s history of racial and gender-based hierarchy and its contemporary ramifications, mostly in K–12 schools. These states include Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. In Florida, Georgia, and Utah, school boards have restricted teachings on race-related topics.

Policymakers in dozens of other states have introduced legislation or campaigns to restrict education on racial injustices and related biases in what are thinly veiled attempts to censor and promote a revisionist whitewashed history. Some, such as Alabama’s pre-filed bill, ban the teaching of any concepts about critical race theory and make broad statements such as “The Alabama State Board of Education believes that the United States of America is not an inherently racist country, and the state of Alabama is not an inherently racist state.” Arizona’s signed bill prohibits the teaching of unconscious bias or responsibility for historic acts of racism. Tennessee’s signed bill withholds funding from schools if teachers connect events to institutional racism.

The fight for civil rights has always been intertwined with worker power and economic justice. Thus, it is not surprising, and in fact deliberate, that the same states enacting bills under the banner of stopping critical race theory are the same states that have historically disempowered workers and today exhibit the worst racial economic inequities. As shown in the map below and in Table 1, the states where lawmakers have advanced these harmful bills also have low rates of unionization, more voter suppression bills, and are more likely to be so-called “right-to-work” states. These states have long disempowered workers and underinvested in community and worker wellbeing.

Map

These right-wing efforts are a distraction from pivotal opportunities for change

Beyond the direct harm to the country’s children and schools, this coordinated campaign to fuel racism is also intended to divert attention away from the critical policy reforms that this moment demands. Media attention has shifted away from the promises and demands for civil rights and economic transformation that buoyed the Biden administration into power. Instead, it has fixated on superficial commentaries on this culture war.

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act should serve as the beginning of long-needed policy reform to transform our economy and livelihoods. What state legislators and advocates need to prioritize right now is equitable spending of ARP funds that centers racial, gender, worker, and immigrant justice to ensure a recovery for all that goes beyond merely restoring our pre-pandemic economy. The complement to this spending is establishing progressive revenue streams that simultaneously fix the regressive nature of most state tax codes while securing long-term funding for critical public services, and equity-promoting, people-centered budgets and programs. This includes ending the reliance in many localities on fees and fines as a major source of government funding.

State usage of ARP funds to address issues like the Black maternal health crisis, for example, would get us closer to achieving the goals of the civil rights movement. In a period plagued by a global pandemic that has shed light on so many of our societal woes and compounding inequalities, significant and deliberate investments to address the racialized and gendered social determinants of health and related outcomes should be our focus. Rather than returning to a pre-pandemic normal, we should be making long-term investments in education as well as other wealth-building mechanisms, such as improving access to credit and banking, distributing baby bonds, or cancelling student debt. We must recognize the latest right-wing frenzy for what it is—an attempt to distract from the reforms needed to make us a more inclusive and equitable society.

A race-conscious view of our policies and the ways they maintain but can also dismantle systems of oppression is what we need right now. Legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, for example, would address some of the unequal bargaining power between employees and employers by making it easier for workers to unionize. Among other reforms, the PRO Act would outlaw so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken unions and bar workers from the better pay and working conditions won through collective bargaining. Unions can be particularly powerful in boosting pay for workers of color. Unionization is also correlated with lower levels of inequality and greater educational investment as a whole. As we show above, the states most effectively and successfully passing anti-critical race theory bills are the same states with very low or no minimum wages and low rates of unionization. They are also more likely to have already passed voter restriction bills in 2021 alone.

Conclusion

The brutal and publicized murders of Black and Latinx people at the hands of the police and armed civilians have motivated widespread organizing and energy around the need for systemic reforms. These efforts have been directed toward the centuries’ long fight against the pervasive anti-Blackness in our legal, economic, and cultural systems and narratives. Many of the economic disparities we see and fight against today have roots in the segregation and economic oppression following Reconstruction.

We must not let another white backlash continue to entrench poverty, immobility, and economic disparities. Fortunately, the threat to democracy and authoritarian streak of this backlash is finally getting greater media coverage. Still, it is up to all of us to see through the transformations necessary to meet the demands of the recent racial justice and health crises and their collision with centuries’ old inequality and injustice in our nation. Our political (re)imaginations must center life-altering material gains, where civil and economic transformations toward equity intersect. The fight for a 21st century New Deal centered on racial, gender, and worker justice must remain lawmakers’ focus.

Table 1