Global Summit: Employer Resistance Drives Down Union Membership in U.S., Around World

The United States has the lowest level of union membership and collective bargaining of any industrial nation—and now the oppressive culture that deters workers from freely forming unions here is being exported around the world.

A study released Dec. 11 by John Logan, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, points out that anti-worker governments are the main cause of the decline in union membership in several countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, but that in the United States there is the added factor of "aggressive and often-illegal employer opposition."

The intensity of employer opposition and government hostility to collective bargaining in the United States is unique among developed nations.

This "repressive character of U.S. labor law, which allows free rein to anti-union employers," not only hurts workers in the United States and in other nations, Logan said today.

There is growing evidence that consultants, employer groups and multinational corporations are exporting U.S.-originated anti-union strategies to other developed countries such as the United Kingdom and Ireland and to transforming countries such as China. Strengthening the right to organize and bargain collectively through the Employee Free Choice Act would benefit not only American workers, but also workers in other nations.

Logan spoke at a Capitol Hill press conference and congressional forum in conjunction with the AFL-CIO-hosted global organizing summit, a two-day meeting in Silver Spring, Md., in which top union leaders discussed strategies for coordinating action.

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