The Biden administration was more pro-labor than any administration in decades, yet unfortunately, under its watch, union membership and collective bargaining coverage continued to decline as a share of the workforce—even as public support for unions reached near record highs.
This failure of the labor movement to grow during auspicious times makes it clear that the movement needs a new path forward. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the fate of America’s middle class and democracy depends on getting the path right, as few things will do more to help the country than a renewed labor movement.
The right path forward includes a much more ambitious policy agenda. While things may seem bleak with union density at a 100-year low and President Donald Trump ripping up union contracts and destroying many of the modest improvements that workers have made, there is opportunity in this moment. The public is hungry for change and is looking for answers. Labor and its allies should use this moment to craft a set of bold reforms and figure out a way to get them enacted.
Yet there is a danger that labor supporters will draw the wrong lessons from the Biden years and chart the wrong path. One wrong lesson to take away is that major policy reforms are unnecessary, believing that using the same or similar policy tools will lead to a different outcome next time. Another is to ignore policy and focus only on organizing, believing that ambitious legal reforms would be too difficult to achieve. Increased organizing is necessary, but it is unlikely to convert worker actions into significantly increased union membership and collective bargaining agreements without complementary policy reforms.
The path for labor renewal includes passing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act—which would create real penalties for companies that violate the law and create a path for new unions to achieve a first contract—and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which would ensure public sector workers have union rights. But it also needs to include even more ambitious changes—such as those that make union access to workers much easier, create strong incentives for union membership, and promote sectoral bargaining—as these strategies are proven to significantly increase union membership and collective bargaining coverage. The law should ensure all workers are covered by a union contract and encouraged to join a union.
Why small policy changes are not enough
The primary reason union density continued its decadeslong decline during the Biden administration is that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—the primary law that governs most private sector union relations—is fundamentally broken and ill-suited to the modern economy where corporations have many tools available to avoid unions. The Biden administration did its best under this structure, but they were hamstrung by the NLRA’s shortcomings that the U.S. Supreme Court has made even worse and a Congress that failed to reform it.
To be clear, the Biden administration’s efforts to vigorously go after lawbreakers and push pro-worker interpretations of existing law were impressive and had a real impact, and many of them should be reenacted—or codified by Congress—when the time comes. Indeed, the Biden administration’s actions helped increase win rates in union elections to more than 70 percent—far higher than they were during the past few decades. But these increased win rates and other Biden administration-prodded improvements didn’t lead to much change in union membership or bargaining coverage.
All told, Biden administration actions helped increase the number of workers in a union by 240,000 over four years—a relatively small amount in a workforce of 170 million. And, because the number of workers in the economy increased far more than organizing victories, the share of unionized workers in the economy continued to decline, falling from 10.3 percent in 2021 to 9.9 percent in 2024; private sector density fell from 6.1 to 5.9 during the same time period. In other words, the Biden administration’s efforts were nowhere near enough to increase union membership as a share of the economy.
The Biden administration’s efforts were nowhere near enough to increase union membership as a share of the economy.
It is unlikely that more time in office would have helped the Biden administration have a significantly greater impact. Certainly, several of the Biden administration’s more promising changes were implemented toward the end of its four-year term and did not have time to be fully felt—such as its ban on captive audience meetings, focus on labor issues during antitrust investigations, and decision to require employers to bargain if they illegally interfere with a union organizing drive.
But the fact that there were very limited results after four years of effort is a big problem—full stop. People need to feel the impacts of policy changes in a reasonable timeframe. This is necessary so that labor unions can actually help the people they say they are fighting for and so that voters can reward policymakers for improving their economic well-being. Labor supporters cannot just say their policies will eventually help.
Worse, there is little indication that more time with the current NLRA structure would have fundamentally changed things. The results from the early years of the Biden administration are basically the same as the results for the entire four years.
The Biden administration took numerous pro-labor actions during its first year: ramping up enforcement of the NLRA, passing an infrastructure law that prioritized union jobs, and pursuing more than 70 labor-supporting items as part of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. The data show that these actions helped in some ways but still did not move the needle. During the first year of the Biden administration, the NLRB recovered 44 percent more money for workers whose rights were violated than in the previous year and increased reinstatement offers from employers by an incredible 545 percent. Yet, union density fell.
Increased organizing is necessary, but not sufficient
Others might resist the call for bold policy changes by arguing that unions need to focus more on organizing. Increased organizing is needed, but it has a much better chance of succeeding under the right set of laws.
High-profile organizing campaigns—especially when they are successful—can make a real difference in the lives of the workers going out on a limb to form a union, inspire others to act, and help create a different set of expectations around appropriate corporate behavior. Far more workers need to be in motion to have any chance of significantly increasing membership and bargaining coverage under the current legal structure or any future one. A groundswell of worker demand and action is also needed to create a political environment in which major policy change is possible. Furthermore, the current economic and political climate presents a tremendous opportunity to channel and amplify worker frustrations in productive directions. But without big policy changes, organizing will not be enough.
Indeed, many unions do not spend enough money on organizing, but a few do spend a significant share of their resources on organizing new members—and it is hard to find evidence that the efforts of even the most active unions are moving the needle. Union density has stagnated or declined over recent decades in every major private sector industry, state, and city. Even champions of increasing organizing recognize that “spending more dollars on organizing isn’t a surefire recipe for success.” As the classic study by academics Henry S. Farber and Bruce Western concludes, “the prospects are dim for a reversal of the downward spiral of labor unions based on increased organizing activity” under the current NLRA system.
The problem with an organizing-only response is that under the current NLRA structure, unions must run faster and faster just to stay in the same place. It would require a tenfold increase from current levels of organizing to engage the same percentage of workers in the economy in organizing campaigns as was done in the 1950s. But these workers would still need to win a union vote and then secure a union contract. Under the current law, only about 1 in 7 organizing drives get through all these hurdles within a year—indicating how much the deck is stacked against workers who want to form a union. Compounding the problem is the fact that unionized firms often find ways to shed their unions, further increasing the number of new workers necessary to organize.
The problem with an organizing-only response is that under the current NLRA structure, unions must run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.
Major policy changes are required so that organizing and collective bargaining campaigns can succeed at scale. Corporations simply have too much power for unions to fundamentally shift the way the economy works without having the law on their side. As Larry Mishel, Lynn Rhinehart and Lane Windham conclude in an Economic Policy Institute report, union membership is falling because of “policy failure.”
That the success of union organizing and bargaining depends on major policy reforms can be seen in many other ways:
- Union membership roughly tripled as a share of the economy after passage of the NLRA in 1935 and the creation of World War II labor boards—bodies made up of labor representatives, employers, and the public that set workplace standards and facilitated union membership. But once the labor boards ended with the war and the Taft-Hartley Act weakened union rights in 1947, membership and bargaining growth stagnated and went into continuous decline.
- Private sector density and coverage in Canada is roughly double that of the United States because the law makes it simpler to form unions and bargain.
- In countries such as Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark that make it easier for unions to access workers, create strong incentives for union membership, and promote sectoral bargaining, union membership is around 50 percent or higher and collective bargaining coverage is even higher.
- Public sector union membership is 65 percent in New York, a jurisdiction with favorable laws, but it is much lower in states with less supportive laws.
Opportunities for bold reform
To be sure, bold policy reform is not an easy path. The political power of anti-labor businesses and the opposition or indifference of many members of Congress to unions are major hurdles. So too is the Senate’s filibuster. But doing the easy thing, knowing it will not work, is no solution. Pro-labor supporters need to figure out how to get bold reforms done.
Pro-labor supporters need to figure out how to get bold reforms done.
As directly harmful as the Trump administration is likely to be for labor, the years when he is in power offer the time and opportunity to plan and move forward. Seven states have recently passed laws on sectoral bargaining or sectoral standard setting, creating a platform for bold state action under existing legal doctrines. The Trump administration’s attempted shutdown of the NLRB could inadvertently create more legal room for states to promote unions and collective bargaining, as could future court decisions. New avenues for federal labor reform through executive actions may also be possible as the Trump administration is pushing the envelope on what is doable—thus leaving a very different set of institutions and powers for the next administration. In Congress, the budget reconciliation process already offers a way to pass significant labor changes with a simple majority and could allow for a much greater range of reforms if Senate Republicans manipulate it further to enable tax cuts for the rich.
Still, getting at least a majority in Congress to support ambitious changes cannot be avoided. Whether the best way to do so means convincing enough members of Congress on one side of the aisle to fight for labor policy or through bipartisanship with the small number of Congressional Republicans making overtures to labor joining together with Democrats in Congress is an open question. But it does not mean settling only for small-scale efforts, such as legislation introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to speed up labor contracts. This bill and other small-scale efforts would be better than the status quo but cannot represent the ambitions of labor unions or their supporters.
The challenge is getting the policies and the politics right to enact and maintain bold reforms.
Conclusion
The nation is in crisis. A much stronger labor movement is needed to rebuild communities, democracy, and the middle class. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anything else that would have as much impact on workers’ lives as a labor movement that represents and bargains for the majority of workers. At this moment, labor unions and their allies must summon their most ambitious thinking and advance solutions that will truly deliver.