On Tuesday, more than 40 Smith College library voted to join the Office & Professional Employees International Union. So far, 2024 is already shaping up to be the biggest year in recent memory for union organizing in western Massachusetts.
On Tuesday, more than 40 Smith College library staffers did something that only 6% of private-sector workers in the United States can claim: joined a union.
The percentage of unionized workers has been on the decline for decades in the United States, down from a peak in the 1950s when more than 30% of all workers in the country were part of a union, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2023, union density, as it's known, hit a record low of 10% of total workers. In the public sector, some 32.5% of workers were unionized last year, compared to 6% of private-sector employees.
“There's definitely a boom happening in western Mass, and nationally, now around union organizing,” said Kerrissey, who has written a book about the subject: Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Struggle over the US Labor Movement. NEPM requested state-level data from a Department of Labor Relations spokesperson last week. On Tuesday afternoon, the agency provided data showing that 1,217 workers have unionized through those processes since 2019. However, the data did not include a breakdown of what years those workers organized.
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