The past year was a practical success for organized labor in America. Waves of strikes generated national heat and focused attention on workplace wages and conditions, and union members won significant gains in Hollywood, with the country’s Big Three automakers, at UPS and at California-based Kaiser Permanente, among others.
It all made for compelling headlines. And those headlines masked a frustrating truth for organizers: Good news notwithstanding, the unionization rate in the U.S. fell once again in 2023.
