Ohio Ranks Third for Union Membership Growth in 2022
The percentage and number of workers in Ohio belonging to unions increased in 2022, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. Last year, 52,000 more Ohio workers joined the union movement than the previous year bringing the total number of union members in the Buckeye state to 699,000.
"It is exciting to see workers in Ohio represented by unions on the rise. It is no coincidence that when there is a pro-union President who invests in union construction, buy American manufacturing and investing in domestic energy policy that more workers will obtain good paying union jobs. Combine this with President Biden’s reconfiguration of the National Labor Relations Board and appointing a card-carrying union member in Marty Walsh to lead the Department of Labor, workers that want to organize and join a union will have a fair shot at doing so," said Ohio AFL-CIO President Tim Burga.
Ohio had the third largest increase in union membership nationally last year, according to an analysis of BLS data by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.. Only California, with an increase of 99,000 union workers, and Texas, which added 72,000 union members, posted larger total gains.
“This report confirms what many of us have known for a long time: that more and more workers want to join a union and are resilient in their fight to do so,” Dan O’Malley, who heads the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, said in an email to Signal Cleveland.