One key lesson of Wisconsin should be that state government politics and policies matter far more in determining the overall level of unionization in this country than federal policies do.
First, state policies can and do change far more often than federal policy does (that latter has seen only small tweaks in policy since the 1950s).
Second, the variations in state government policies are more fundamental to whether a person has an effective opportunity to join a union than do federal policies. Given the focus on the National Labor Relations Act and the mobilization around the Employee Free Choice Act, that might seem counterintuitive, but look at the chart below, which shows a sample of unionization rates from different states, which vary from 3.2% in North Carolina up to 24.2% in New York State.
I’ve added a number of European countries and their rates of union membership to the list, which makes clear that the variation in unionization between U.S. states matters as much as the variation between countries. Whether you live in North Carolina or New York is at least as large a determinant to whether you are in a labor union than whether you live in the United States or a different country.
Different U.S. states in fact scatter above and below unionization rates of different European countries, with rates of unionization lower in Texas and Florida than in France, while California and Illinois have higher unionization rates than France and Spain, Washington State has comparable unionization rates to Germany, and New York approaches the unionization rate in the United Kingdom.
Percent of Employed
Represented by Unions State/Country
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03.2 North Carolina
05.4 Texas
05.6 Florida
08.0 France
10.1 Alabama
15.5 Illinois
16.0 Spain
17.5 California
19.4 Washington
20.0 Germany
21.0 Netherlands
21.8 Hawaii
22.9 Alaska
24.2 New York
27.0 United Kingdom
71.0 Sweden
Data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and European Trade Union Institute (ETUI)
Obviously, no U.S. state comes close to unionization rates like that of a country like Sweden and in some cases, unions in European countries have more political and economic power than their rate of unionization would indicate.
But the bottom line remains that it does not appear that national policy in the United States is as significant as the variation in policies between U.S. states in determining opportunities to form a union.
Obviously, state policies on the right of state employees to form unions, as is at stake in Wisconsin, is one clear part of that state variation in unionization rates. And so-called Right to Work statutes, where states can vote to allow individuals to not pay union dues even when they enjoy the benefits of a union contract, is another source of state-to-state variation.
But there are a host of other laws that matter as well. “Prevailing wage” statutes in many states require that government money paid to private contractors for public works pay union wages, a strong boost for the unionized building trades sector. Other states have leveraged public money to encourage day care and home health care workers to unionize.
In other states, unions effectively use zoning or other licensing law to encourage the expansion of unionized firms and limit the expansion of anti-union firms. The resistance of New York City to allowing a Wal-Mart to expand there, even as other states have actually financially subsidized new Wal-Mart stores, is one example of this kind of variation.
And some differences come from the history of political and executive leadership in states, which outside formal policy, has made a difference in both tone and support for actual union organizing campaigns. A prime historical example is the Flint sit-down strike, which was the keystone moment for unionizing the auto sector. It’s worth remembering that the UAW did not gain recognition through the mechanisms of an NLRB election but by direct action taking over auto plants. And the reason the strikers were able to do so is that the governor of Michigan at the time, Frank Murphy, used the national guard in the state to support the strikers and ignored a court order requesting him to expel the strikers. Compare that to many southern states whose political leaders saw breaking strikes as going hand-in-hand with protecting Jim Crow discrimination.
The bottom-line is that, while the National Labor Relations Act is a horrendously weak law in defense of union rights, changing it is not the only route, or even necessarily the most effective route, to restoring strong labor unions in our country. A more focused political strategy in mobilizing the public support we have seen in Wisconsin for changing laws, policies and politics at the state level around the freedom to form unions is far more likely to succeed, especially in the face of the near-certain filibusters we know will block labor law reform at the federal level.