Union membership in the private sector stands today at a mere 6.9 percent, down drastically from its high of 35 percent during the mid-1950s. Even more strikingly, today’s 6.9 percent union membership rate represents an even lower union membership rate than in 1929, before passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), New Deal-era legislation which protected employee attempts to unionize a workforce. Without political intervention, most believe that union membership in both the private and public sectors would continue to decline and soon be a thing of the past.
But, unfortunately for the business community, political intervention came in the form of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which was designed to aid unions in their organizational efforts. The EFCA ultimately lost steam and now appears dead, but President Obama’s recent nominations to the National Labor Relations Board stacked the board with three union-friendly Democratic board members to one Republican. And, with one Democratic appointee’s term having already ended and another’s set to expire at the end of the year, the democratic majority was expected to act quickly to attempt to remedy the sharply declining union membership rate.