Union Growth and Collective Bargaining Legislation

At the individual level, support for unionization is likely to be strongest where the employee is dissatisfied with one or more significant aspects of his or her job, and believes that having union representation will bring about positive change. On a much larger scale, though, the factor which has historically brought about the most rapid growth in unionization has been the passage of legislation granting unions the right to engage in collective bargaining with employers.

In the private sector, unions experienced their most rapid growth following the enactment of the NLRA by Congress in 1935. In the public sector, unions similarly experienced rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s following the issuance of Executive Order 10988 in 1962—which granted federal government employees limited rights to organize unions and bargaining collectively—and the subsequent passage of legislation legalizing public sector collective bargaining in many states.

The relationship between the passage of laws enabling collective bargaining and the growth of unions is not surprising. The opportunity to allow workers to influence their wages, hours, and working conditions through collective bargaining is undoubtedly the most significant benefit that unions can offer to their members. On the other side of the coin, the inability of unions in recent years to gain more favorable collective bargaining legislation at either the federal or state levels appears to have been a major factor in the decline of union membership in the private sector and the stagnation of union growth in the public sector.