Unions representing employees of local governments showed gains in membership in 2018, according to the annual report released by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This broad category, which includes most public school teachers, police officers and firefighters, saw the number of union members increase by 64,000 over last year. The union share of the total local government workforce rose to 40.3 percent from 40.1 percent.
Though we do not have further disaggregation by job title or month, these figures must be considered a victory for teacher unions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus ruling last June, which ended the public-sector union practice of charging agency fees to nonmembers.
While local government unions could celebrate, the news was not good for public-sector union membership at the federal and state levels.
Federal government unions added 5,000 new members, but the workforce increased by 55,000 employees, reducing the unionization rate to 26.4 percent.