Workers refused to form a union in Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, as a setback of organized labor’s efforts to reverse decades of declining private sector membership across the country.
This Alabama results According to data from Georgia State University, unions face the challenge of increasing membership in the US private sector. In the US private sector, the proportion of union representatives is only 6.3%, down from 24.2% in 1973.
Last year, although millions of jobs were laid off in the country during the pandemic, including 300,000 union positions, there has been an increase in hiring at Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the United States, and other e-commerce warehouses. For unions, the time seems ripe for organizing workers in an environment where the expanding sector and unions have traditionally been operating: a large blue-collar construction site where many employees are engaged in similar jobs.
Despite the effort, the effort failed President Biden’s endorsement,He says The goal of establishing more union work And update Many congressional Democrats support labor.
According to the Ministry of Labor, last year there were more union members working for the government than for private sector employers, indicating that the public sector is now a stronghold for organized labor. Teacher strikes and protests in 2018 and 2019 won salary increases and other concessions in Arizona, West Virginia, Los Angeles, and other states and cities. Recently, the educators union has affected the renewal of the pandemic in Chicago and other places. The plan to open the school.