Did the AFL-CIO Add 452,000 New Members?
No, it's a dubious PR number
In a new filing with the Department of Labor (DOL), the AFL-CIO — the U.S. federation of sixty unions — reports that membership among its affiliates has increased by 452,124 in 2024. Membership increased from 12,996,375 in 2023 to 13,448,499 in 2024 (fiscal year ending June 2024). Has organized labor finally turned around its decades-long membership decline? Sadly, no, it’s a dubious number that the AFL-CIO is using to boost its clout.
Is Working America a Union?
All private sector unions must report their membership and financials to the DOL under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. However, unions have a fair amount of flexibility in defining membership categories, and the AFL-CIO has long exploited that loophole.
Of the 13.5 million members claimed by the AFL-CIO, 4.6 million are members of a political canvassing entity called Working America. The AFL-CIO created Working America in 2003, part of a trend in the labor movement (and lefty foundations) of establishing and funding alt-labor organizations.
Working America performs several valuable roles, but it is not a union. It was initially created as a workaround to use union dues to contact non-union workers in political campaigns. Before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 — which allowed unfettered spending by unions and corporations — the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act put restrictions on union spending on political campaigns. One reason Working America was established in 2003 was to evade these restrictions to do broader political work, as Sasha Issenberg wrote in Slate in 2012:
Canvassers would knock on doors and ask residents if they wanted to join Working America. Anyone who signed a piece of paper became effectively an AFL member, eligible to be included in the union’s political programs.
The AFL-CIO describes Working America as the “strongest field program in the country” and urges affiliates to “give preference to Working America’s field canvass operation when seeking to contract for paid field operations.” Since 2005, the AFL-CIO has spent over $163 million supporting Working America (and related entities).
In addition to political work, Working America was loosely conceived to recruit potential members for future organizing campaigns. In a 2006 Executive Council resolution, the AFL-CIO noted that Working America “is able to support organizing efforts by the AFL-CIO’s affiliates, and has worked with several affiliates in experimental programs.” There is no evidence (that I could find) that the organizing initiative was ever successful then or today. If you want to delve into the thinking behind Working America, check out this interview with Karen Nussbaum, the organization's founder.
Nevertheless, the AFL-CIO’s claim that Working America’s canvassing and contact lists are “members” of an affiliated union is not credible. “Members” of Working America do not have collective-bargaining contracts, voting rights, or mandatory dues. In a 2003 statement, the AFL-CIO made this abundantly clear:
Working America will not be employment-based or workplace-based in any way; nor will it deal with employers for the purposes of collective bargaining, grievance handling, or any other type of job-related representation; nor will its members receive any benefits or privileges associated with employment-based representation.
I’ve been a “member” of Working America for over a decade and have never been personally contacted outside emails with AFL-CIO talking points or ads selling union-backed credit cards.1 You can join by clicking on a link, and voila, union membership has increased.
With a $10 million budget (in 2023) and a 4.6 million voter contact list, Working America is undoubtedly doing important electoral work. And if it routes those non-union contacts to affiliate unions for organizing campaigns, even better. But to call folks like me who filled out a contact form on a website “members” of a union is absurd. As Steve Early wrote for Labor Notes over a decade ago:
Generic “associate member” programs, like Working America, may be useful for building political mailing lists, conducting voter registration, and doing voter education and turnout…But dumbing down the concept of membership…has little in common with existing serious, long-term efforts to build workplace organization in the absence of employer recognition and bargaining rights.
If you dig deeper into the AFL-CIO’s DOL filing, you’ll find that the actual membership of the AFL-CIO’s sixty affiliates is 8,827,223 members, down from 8,877,739 in 2023, or a 50,516 loss of membership in 2024. Yet, on Labor Day, President Liz Shuler claimed that “[w]e represent nearly 13 million workers in our Federation across 60 unions.”
In reality, the AFL-CIO only represents 8.8 million union members, or 61% of the 14.4 million union members in the U.S. Large and influential unions like the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, and the National Education Association are not affiliated with the federation.
Union Membership and Tipping Points
Regarding union membership data, Daily Union Elections — a popular twitter/x account that posts valuable information on NLRB elections and other organizing developments — posted the top-line membership changes recently reported to the DOL (fiscal year ending in June 2024).
This tweet was gleefully retweeted/posted by numerous unions as a sign that membership is finally growing (“Workers across the country are learning that it’s better in a union!” the AFL-CIO retweeted). Still, it’s a bit more complicated if you look below the surface.
Yes, the American Federation of Teachers saw an increase of 66,000 members, but 49,000 of that gain was retirees or members who don’t have voting rights or pay dues. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) saw a 15,000 gain, but most (12,000) was due to an increase in retirees who pay no dues and have no voting rights.2 These small membership gains reported by Daily Union Elections are counterbalanced with the AFL-CIO’s disclosure that its affiliates have lost 51,000 members since 2023.
It is fine to cheer small increases in union membership, but the challenge is daunting when you look at the bigger picture (and math). In 2023, union density — the percentage of the workforce in a union — was at ten percent. However, if overall employment increases by one million in 2024, organized labor will need to organize +/- 141,000 workers to maintain the same density rate of ten percent.
In this vein, I was reading Joe Burns's 2014 book on public-sector organizing, and I was reminded of the concept of a “tipping point” for organized labor:
Several years ago, a concept floated around the labor movement known as the "tipping point," which argued that if union density dropped below a certain unspecified level, labor would go into a death spiral.
In a recent article for Jacobin, I argued that labor is one or two bad election cycles from the tipping point or death spiral. Using Reagan’s brutally anti-labor presidency as a comparable to a Trump second term, the data are scary:
During Reagan’s first term, union membership declined by 2.8 million members or 14 percent, reducing union density from 23 percent in 1980 to 18.8 percent in 1984. If union membership shrunk at the same rate under a Trump presidency, organized labor would lose two million members, union density would decline from 10 percent today to 8.6 percent by the end of Trump’s term.
That’s why it’s vital to be open and honest about the scope of labor’s challenges, not engage in pollyannish boosterism. The AFL-CIO’s fudging of membership numbers is symptomatic of a larger problem outlined in an article by the journalist Hamilton Nolan:
I am suggesting something very basic here for the labor movement: Understand the urgency of our predicament. Figure out a goal—one sufficient to address the needs of workers in America. Figure out what it will take to get to that goal. Make a plan. Determine the resources necessary to enact the plan. Get the resources. Spend the money. Do the plan. Evaluate your progress or lack thereof according to the goals you have set. Basic things. Companies, football teams, nonprofits, universities, government agencies—all of these institutions carry out the process above, all the time. Organized labor’s institutions do not. Such basic planning and evaluation does not exist in the labor movement. The AFL-CIO does not have a document laying out how to achieve a goal like this. Nor do they issue annual reports on these figures that hold themselves to a measurable standard of advancement. This is a significant failure on our part, one that we can’t blame on evil corporations. It’s hard for us to crawl out of the quicksand if nobody will even begin sketching out how to build a ladder.
The AFL-CIO could take a tiny step in this direction by not grossly exaggerating its membership numbers. Or even better, why not “build a ladder” after the election and start organizing the 4.6 members of Working America into real unions?
Thanks for reading Radish Research, a regular newsletter focusing on the roots of the labor movement’s decline and revival using investigative research methods and financial analysis skills I learned as a campaigner for progressive unions. My research has been featured in the Washington Post, American Prospect, In These Times, Labor Notes, The Nation, The Progressive, Dollars & Sense and other fine lefty publications. My byline appears in Jacobin. You might wonder why this newsletter is called Radish Research and who the heck I am. For more thoughts, I’m at @Radish_Research on Twitter/X.
A less savory explanation for the AFL-CIO’s insistence on classifying Working America contact lists as members relates to the over $22 million royalty payments received in 2024 by the Federation from financial and communication firms. Discounted products from these providers are a “member benefit” for joining Working America.
For a more in-depth analysis of membership and financial trends at individual unions in 2023, see my article New 2023 Data on Union Membership and Finances.