Catching the Next Wave: A Study of Internal Organising Among Young Workers in a US Union

Abstract

The labour movement in the United States has been grappling with how best to renew itself after decades of declining union density. The urgency of this work for unions became especially clear when the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that union density in the US had fallen between 2011 and 2012 from 11.8 per cent to 11.3 per cent, a loss of 400,000 members (BLS, 2013). For workers under 35 years of age, who now make up over 35 per cent of the US workforce, union density fell from 7.8 per cent in 2011 to 7.5 per cent in 2012 (BLS, 2013). One of the most pressing challenges, then, confronting unions in the US involves their ability to engage young workers and to cultivate young leaders. Young union members will need to step into leadership positions, as much of labour’s ‘baby boomer’ leadership and membership nears retirement age. One strategy to accomplish this has been to encourage unions to form young worker groups.