Looking At The New Union Election Statistics

About a week ago, the Bureau of Labor Statics released the latest numbers on union elections, along with a 13 year trend. Here are the numbers for 2009: there were 1,304 elections for union representation held with the union winning 864 of them. That represents a 66.3 percent win total, the highest winning percentage since World War II probably- and slightly higher than last years 64.7 percent.

It appears that that is the new labor strategy. Don’t bother holding the election unless it looks pretty evident the union will win. Looking back over the past 13 years, the union winning percentage has increased steadily from 50.8 percent in 1997 to where it is today. While that may make for good PR, it has not done much to increase union numbers.

In 1997, there were a total of 3,261 elections held- the union won about half- with a little more than 90,000 employees joining the union (out of about 224,000 who cast ballots). In the past year, just 44,033 new employees were involved in petitions won by the union- down about 50 percent from 13 years ago. At the same time, only 69,832 employees were even eligible to vote- down a remarkable 70 percent from 1997.