Big Labor's diminishing clout

Barely 11 percent of U.S. workers are in a union today. What does that mean for the organized labor movement?

United Auto Workers
(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

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Organized labor has come up short in "the most important trial of unions' influence since President Trump's win last year," said Max Ehrenfreund at The Washington Post. After years of dogged campaigning, the International Association of Machinists last week failed to sway the workers at a major Boeing factory in South Carolina to organize. Nearly three-quarters of the North Charleston plant's 3,000 employees voted against unionizing. The defeat wasn't a surprise. South Carolina is "profoundly hostile to organized labor." Just 1.6 percent of the state's workers belong to a union, the lowest level in the U.S. But organizers hoped to gain a foothold in the state's resurgent manufacturing sector by unionizing workers at one of its most recognizable companies. Now, the machinists will have to wait at least a year before petitioning for another vote.

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