The Department of Labor released its
annual report on union membership
last week, finding that the union membership rate fell to 10.3% in 2020, the lowest percentage on record.
Union membership is even lower among private-sector workers, of whom only 6.1% belong to a union.
There are many reasons why workers no longer want to join unions, but one of the more pressing ones can be found in a press release last week from the largest donor to female Democratic candidates in the nation, EMILY’s List.
What does a Democratic political action committee created to help elect pro-abortion female Democrats have to do with declining union membership?
For almost a year now, far-left progressive activists have been pushing all Democratic allied groups to force their members and beneficiaries to support changing Senate rules to get rid of the filibuster.
Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, enjoyed the early endorsement and financial backing of EMILY’s List for both her House and Senate campaigns. She is a devout defender of a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion and has never wavered in this commitment. For all of EMILY’s List’s existence, up until last week, that is all they asked of any female candidate they supported.
Not any more.
Facing extreme pressure from donors and activists, EMILY’s List was forced to announce it would cut Sinema off from any future endorsements or donations if she failed to vote with Democrats to end the filibuster.
So EMILY’s List is no longer a one-issue advocacy group. They have become part of the leftist blob.
On issue after issue, group after Democratic group has abandoned what was once a committed focus to advancing a particular issue, instead becoming just one more cell in an all-encompassing far-left agenda.
Unions have not been immune to this. Just go to the AFL-CIO’s website, and you’ll see web pages devoted to
climate change
,
immigration amnesty
, and
racial justice
. Higher wages and better working conditions are no longer the top priority for the AFL-CIO anymore. Drag queen happy hours and delta smelt are now equally important.
Workers have noticed this. Asked to identify the top reason why they don’t want to join a union, 75% of non-union workers identified “union political involvement” as the top reason they did not want to join.
According to the Pew Research Center, just 6% of adults identify with the
“Progressive Left”
wing of the Democratic Party. It is this group that now dictates what positions every Democratic group (the unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, the environmental groups, EMILY’s List) must take on every issue.
No wonder workers are running as fast as they can from this blob.
