Mass. union membership declined slightly in 2023, still above national average
Photo | Grant Welker
Members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association picket during the record-breaking strike against Saint Vincent's Hospital, which lasted more than 300 days in 2021 and 2022, which largely centered around nurse-to-patient staffing levels.
Unionized workers accounted for 12.6% of employees in Massachusetts in 2023, a slight decrease from the figure of 12.7% seen in 2022.
Despite the slight decline, union membership in Massachusetts remains above the national average, according to figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday, as 10% of nationwide wages and salary workers in 2023 were union members, the same national figure as last year.
Massachusetts had 412,000 union workers in 2023, with an additional 31,000 workers either being represented by a union on their main job or covered by a contract or employee association while not being union members themselves.
Massachusetts was third in the New England region in union membership in 2023. Connecticut led the region, with 15.9% of its wage and salary workers being unionized, while Vermont came in second, with a rate of 14.3%.
Maine had the lowest union membership in the region, at 9.3%.
Thursday’s revelation about the slight decrease in union membership came despite a number of high-profile organized labor efforts, including in Central Massachusetts:
- 29 Hudson school bus drivers voted to join Teamsters Local 170, a Worcester-based union, in November.
- Nurses at Framingham Union Hospital submitted a letter requesting voluntary recognition of their decision to join the Massachusetts Nurses Association in September. The hospital declined to voluntarily recognize their efforts, but the nurses voted to join the union by a 188-37 vote in January.
- Members of the Massachusetts Community College Council, a Worcester-based union representing faculty and staff at the state’s 15 community colleges, rallied in November in Worcester and five other municipalities to demand a pay raise.
- Unionized janitors and an association of the region’s largest cleaning contractors union agreed to a tentative agreement in November, narrowly avoiding a strike that could have seen 12,500 cleaners in Massachusetts and Rhode Island walk off the job.
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