Annual statistics released Thursday by the Department of Labor show that the national rate of union membership dropped by 1.6 percentage points over the course of the Obama presidency.
The percentage of US workers belonging to unions was 10.7 in 2016, down from 11.1 percent on a year-over-year basis. Union membership rate either dropped or remained stagnant every year under President Obama, eroding from 12.3 percent in 2009.
The absolute quantity of union members, too, was down under President Obama. In 2009, there were 15.3 million Americans belonging to unions. By 2016, that figure was down to 14.6 million–a decline of about 700,000.
The end of the years-long dip coincided with the lost of crucial support for Democrats among union households.
Exit polling showed Hillary Clinton winning union households last November by 8 percent–the slimmest margin for a Democratic nominee since 1984, when Walter Mondale was trounced by Ronald Reagan.
“Clinton’s poor performance among union households appeared to especially damage her in crucial Midwestern states,” Politico noted in November. In Ohio, for example, Clinton actually lost union households to Trump by 9 percentage points, per exit polls. Trump comfortably won the Buckeye State.
Major unions largely supported President Obama throughout his presidency, but clashed with him on a number of issues, including on trade.
Labor leaders and rank-and-file vociferously opposed the Trans Pacific Partnership, for example, the centerpiece of Obama trade policy. This week, President Trump made withdrawal from the agreement one of his first executive actions.
The labor movement was similarly disappointed during President Obama’s first term, when the administration quickly abandoned a push to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.
The strongest form of that legislation would have made it easier for organizers seeking to form unions, by obviating the need for an election–if more than 50 percent of an emerging bargaining unit agrees to sign onto union membership.
Even a compromise proposal–one that would have kept in place secret ballot votes for union certification–was abandoned by Democrats, early in the Obama days.
“The compromise had a shot at winning all 60 Democratic votes,” the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson wrote, in 2010.
Meyerson noted, then, that unions–which spent more than $300 million on Democratic campaigns in 2008–had asked for a vote, in 2009. But President Obama and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) wanted to wait until health reform had passed.
By the time it did, Senate Democrats had lost the 60-seat majority they would have needed to advance EFCA.
“For the unions, the Senate’s inability to pass EFCA is devastating and galling,” Meyerson wrote.
In 2008, President Obama won 20 percent of union households. During his re-election campaign, Obama won 18 percent of them–a decrease from the previous ballot, but still ten percentage points greater than the proportion won by Clinton last November.
