Union Membership In Virginia: See Recent Trends

VIRGINIA — The Labor Day holiday celebrates workers in Virginia, and many of them are either members of, or represented by, unions.

Union membership in Virginia was at 4.4 percent in 2020, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from earlier this year shows. That’s approximately 164,000 Virginia employees who were members of unions when the data was taken.

That’s up from Virginia union numbers in 2019. About 156,000 were union members that year, accounting for 4 percent of wage and salary workers.

Virginia union membership is lower than the national average, which was 10.8 percent in 2020, according to the labor statistics bureau. The national union membership rate went up by 0.5 percent from 2019.

Unions represent even more workers in Virginia, however. Those whose jobs were covered by a union or employee association contract in 2020 even though they themselves weren’t members amounted to about 201,000, about 5.4 percent of workers in the state.

In the District of Columbia, union membership was at 8.6 percent in 2020, down from 9.3 percent a year earlier. That translates to 30,000 members in the District.

DC union membership is lower than the national average, which was 10.8 percent in 2020

Nationally, union membership in 2020 was much more common among public sector workers, 34.8 percent, compared with those in the private sector, 6.3 percent, the labor statistics bureau found in its report, which used membership data collected as part of the monthly Current Population Survey.

In the 28 states that are “right-to-work states," which includes Virginia, workers don’t have to join labor unions to benefit from the contracts negotiated by the union.

Unionization rates were the highest among workers in protective service operations (36.6 percent) and education, training and library occupations (35.9 percent). Hawaii and New York had the highest union membership rates in 2019 and 2020, the report found. South Carolina and North Carolina had the two lowest rates both years.

It was the Central Labor Union in New York City that started the first Monday of September holiday in 1882. Nearly 140 years later, the New York City Central Labor Council represents about 1.3 workers from every trade in the public and private sectors of the New York economy, according to its website.

Add any background or recent news from a labor union in your state if it’s available and pertinent.