Increased Immigrants in US = Decreased Union Membership Rates

Did you know that the increase in immigrants into the U.S. correlates to the decrease in union membership over the past several decades?

According to the CATO Institute, between 1980 and 2020, union membership sank from 40% to 11%, and immigrants were responsible for nearly 30% of that decline.

Per CATO, immigrants have a lower preference for unionization. They also increase diversity in the workforce. The increased diversity, in turn, decreases solidarity among workers. Without solidarity, organizing workers is very difficult.

Union organizers used to see immigrants as a threat to membership because of the law of supply and demand. The greater the supply of immigrants, the lesser the demand for unions.

Unions used to dislike immigrants so much that the American Federation of Labor (the AFL part of the AFL-CIO) strongly supported the Immigration Act of 1924 which slashed the annual number of immigrants into the United States from over 1 million per year to just tens of thousands by the 1930s.

Prominent labor leader and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph supported the Immigration Act of 1924 but wanted to see immigration cut to zero. To him, zero immigrants would help Black Americans join unions.

United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez also fiercely opposed immigration. He pressed for increased deportations to prevent farms from using migrants as replacement workers during union strikes.

The AFL-CIO did an about-face and endorsed an increase to legal immigration in 2000 as union membership plummeted.

By then, unions were playing the numbers game: the more people in the pool, the better the chance that one of them would be willing to pay union dues.

The about-face did not pay off and statistically was never going to pay off. Over the past 25 years, immigrants have been 33% less likely to join unions.

I find this theory fascinating. But I don’t know enough about it to say I fully agree or disagree with it. What do you think?