Union membership stabilizing in North Dakota, Minnesota
GRAND FORKS – Union membership has been on the decline for decades, but union leaders in North Dakota are optimistic about the future of workers groups as numbers stabilize.
“We’re at a point where we can’t lose more,” said Waylon Hedegaard, president and secretary-treasurer of the North Dakota AFL-CIO.
There were about 14.6 million union members, or 10.7 percent of the workforce, in 2016 across the country, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics That’s a drop of about 240,000 from 2015, or a rate decrease of one-half percent. That’s also 2.9 million fewer than in 1983, when the rate of membership was 20.1 percent.
North Dakota has a lower concentration of union members than most of the country with 5.5 percent and roughly 20,000 members, according to the BLS. That’s much lower than Minnesota’s rate of 14.2 percent, or about 365,000 members.
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