Is the Labor Movement growing or shrinking? The incredible views of the AFL-CIO – MR Online

By Chris Townsend (Posted Feb 28, 2026)
Much of organized labor in the United States seems to go merrily on its way as we enter the second year of Trump’s second term. Many unions are dutifully hiding in the weeds and still hoping to go unnoticed. New union organizing remains at negligible levels, a dire situation by any measure. Organizing continues to trail off in both the number of union elections conducted as well as the number of workers who participate. Fewer and fewer unions run serious organizing programs, with many having been mothballed during the 2020-2022 pandemic years—and have yet to be revived.
Yes, there are sometimes small year-over-year improvements. Yes, there are unions and parts of unions who continue to try to organize the unorganized. But over recent decades the trend has been consistently disastrous. Those diligent union organizers out there in the new organizing trenches deserve our fullest thanks and support. They represent the hope for organized labor.
During the pandemic, new union organizing elections at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) fell to an astonishing low level of just 862 elections nationwide in 2021, with 663 won by unions. Last year, 2025, matters improved; there were 1,406 elections held, with unions winning 1,152. A total of 75,000 workers were won in these elections. But to appreciate the long trail of employer destruction let’s look back several decades. I joined the labor movement in 1979, and that year alone the NLRB conducted 8043 elections to determine if the workers wanted to be represented by a union. While only 45% of the units voted “yes” for the union, this totaled just more than 212,000 workers in winning contests. So, by any current measure, the labor movement is organizing successfully today via NLRB elections at a rate of about 35% as well as what was being accomplished 47 years ago.
We would be remiss if we ignored additional ghastly facts. Of the 75,000 workers who managed last year to run through the employer minefield and win in their union elections, the number who will manage to bargain an all-important first contract with their employer will likely be about 50% of the 1,152 units. The math will be uneven because of the differences in the sizes of units, but this roughly means that of the 75,000 workers, maybe 30,000, or perhaps in an exceptional year 40,000, will end up with a first union contract.
Given that a huge number of these elections were held in open-shop “right-to-work” states, the actual number of eventual union members will be considerably less. Workers in these states can share in the benefits of their first union contract but are not required to pay dues. Now brace yourselves for one more shock; data shows that of those workers in units somehow able to win first union contracts, as many as half will never reach a second contract. Workplace closings, layoffs, decertification, and other causes take a horrible toll.
Are the catastrophic facts of this situation becoming clear? Facts are, as they say, stubborn things. There are of course different union elections that are held in the public sector, but only in the two dozen states which allow it for their state and local workforces. These numbers have also dramatically slowed in many states. And be reminded that all public sector units in the U.S. are open shops, owing that distinction to the disastrous Janus decision of the Supreme Court in 2018. There are also elections in the rail and airline industries, but in recent decades they have tended to at best replace the losses suffered as employers shrink and restructure. Unions do sometimes manage to win recognition from employers voluntarily, such as through “card check” arrangements. But these numbers remain tiny in the overall picture.
What is the sum total of all this? We face an enormous crisis. Yes, a crisis. Think about these stark realities the next time some left wing or labor leader, journalist or writer offers their latest “good news only” report on the organizing upsurges and progress somewhere. While they might mean well, these efforts frequently act to justify and cover-up for the persistent refusal of many labor leaders to tackle this critical task. The crisis of new union organizing is most often swept under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind.
This catastrophic crisis cannot be glossed-over or concealed. But that will not stop our AFL-CIO from trying. In a recent editorial carefully crafted by its diligent public relations staff the labor federation representing about 60% of U.S. union membership gave it its best shot to spin this situation as something other than a disaster. Titled, Despite Relentless Attacks, Nearly Half a Million Workers Unionized in 2025, the federation did its best to try to gloss over and avoid the reality of the new organizing crisis. The journalistic gymnastics exhibited in this mysterious release surely exceed the boundaries of the imagination for anyone even remotely familiar with the current new onion organizing environment.
Citing a trove of suspect and unrelated data, and ignoring reality selectively on several levels, the federation credited “years of sustained organizing” in “new industries” and in “the south” as the primary source of this miraculous turnabout. The journalistic sleight-of-hand expands quickly in the first paragraph when the new measuring metric is inserted as writers claim that 11.2% of workers are now “covered” by union contracts. Gone apparently is any measure of actual dues-paying members, with the non-profit forces having apparently won out over the traditional trade union thinkers at the Fed. Any real membership claim has been shelved apparently, as that the AFL-CIO’s own recent reports explain that, of the more than 14.8 million claimed union members belonging in one way or the other to the Federation, an admitted 4.8 million are not members at all. These phantom “associate members” once subtracted would bring federation membership to around 10 million members.
The lengths to which the AFL-CIO “leadership” will go to ignore facts, invent new metrics to conceal the destruction, and engage in outright deceptive manipulation are nothing new. All is justified in the task of propping-up the failing regime of AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. In equal disrepute are also the members of the Executive Council of affiliate union leaders, those presumably elected to guide the Federation in some better direction than this. Rounding out the questions posed by the recent fantastic press release are more claims of unverified public sector, southern, and young worker growth, when in fact the available data on these questions are scant or even nonexistent. Few unions maintain anything like systematic statistics on the ages of their members, or the numbers of non-members in their open shops. These sorts of claims permeate the release, leading this author to wonder what it was that triggered the creation of this document in the first place? What purpose is being served here?
Trump’s smashing of the several federal government unions one year ago is offered as some sort of explanation for the growth in federal government union membership. In fact, the largest federal employee union—AFGE–was forced to lay off half of its national staff in 2025 on account of its gigantic membership losses. And the whopper omission of all is the lack of any mention that the entire private sector labor movement may be forced during the Trump regime to grapple with the loss of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) as several employer cases move steadily towards our right-wing Supreme Court. The legal nullification of the NLRA would be an overnight catastrophe, with collective bargaining contracts immediately invalidated and union dues checkoff effectively shut down for millions of union members. Millions more union members may be lost as the Trump attack proceeds, with the oddly celebratory AFL-CIO press release only serving to reveal the irresponsible state of the Federation leadership today.
Similar crises in labor’s long history have occurred and been dealt with by genuine labor leaders in a manner that has allowed labor to correct course. Legendary U.S. labor leader and communist William Z. Foster was one such leader, and his collected works American Trade Unionism is required for all playing any serious role in today’s labor movement. Available at: https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/american-trade-unionism/  Many of the defects and corruptions afflicting the labor leaders of today were well known to Foster, and in all cases his remedy was to confront them, oppose them if necessary, and mobilize the membership to push for serious initiatives to move the unions forward. And most of all, to organize the many millions of unorganized workers in the industries, workshops, and offices. If our labor movement cannot be somehow moved to undertake this urgent task, to replace our losses and ultimately grow exponentially, our perpetual marginal status is ensured.
One clear and honest point made in the otherwise surreal, even dishonest AFL-CIO release is the mention of the wide popularity enjoyed by the unions in the minds and opinions of a large majority of the unorganized toilers. This is nothing new and only grows as the condition of the unorganized in the unrestricted grip of the employers worsens. Evidence abounds that many millions of workers would join the unions but for any opportunity to do so. Without unions organizing actively on any significant scale, there exist few avenues for the unorganized to connect with the unions, let alone join them. The assorted labor leadership in the unions for the most part consider new organizing to be too difficult, too expensive, too controversial, or too exhausting to seriously pursue. This justifies their inaction and profiteering from the unions, with lavish lifestyles and pursuits taking the place of the hard slogging work to reach out and mobilize the unorganized masses.
What exactly explains the release of this information at this time from some leaders of this labor movement, will remain a mystery. Stranger things have happened, and regardless of the slicing-and-dicing of the current plight of organized labor the fact remains that no solution is possible unless the existing union leadership is pushed hard to tackle the task of organizing the unorganized. Or perhaps they are removed and replaced by new blood who are up to this daunting task.
If you are interested in the crisis of union organizing in the United States and Canada I have written extensively about this crisis, and interested readers should review some of these recent articles:
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