Unions: Power in Numbers
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What students do
- Define a labor union and explain how collective bargaining gives workers more leverage than negotiating alone
- Trace U.S. union membership from the 1955 peak of 33 percent down to 9.9 percent today using a line chart
- Compare union density by state, reading Hawaii's 26.5 percent against North Carolina's 2.4 percent off a bar chart
- Evaluate three recent organizing drives, Starbucks Workers United, the Amazon Labor Union, and the UAW Stand-Up Strike, and argue both sides of the union debate
What it covers
- Why union density fell from about a third of workers in 1955 to under 10 percent today
- Three current organizing stories, Starbucks, Amazon's JFK8 warehouse, and the 2023 UAW Stand-Up Strike
- Both sides of the pros-and-cons debate over unions, argued from the evidence rather than assigned a side
Learning targets
- Define a LABOR UNION and explain how COLLECTIVE BARGAINING gives workers more power in setting wages, benefits, and working conditions than they have individually
- Trace the rise and decline of U.S. union membership from the 1955 peak (~33%) to today (9.9%) using a line chart, and read state-level differences in union density off a bar chart
- Evaluate three recent organizing efforts (Starbucks Workers United, Amazon Labor Union JFK8, the UAW Stand-Up Strike) and present BOTH SIDES of the union pros-and-cons debate
From one teacher to another
After the history and the chart reading, this lesson ends in an actual debate instead of a lecture, with students arguing both sides of the union question rather than being handed a conclusion. The three organizing stories, Starbucks, the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, and the UAW strike, give the numbers somewhere to land besides a decades-old chart. Most classes are already split on unions before this lesson starts, and I didn't want the activity to flatten that.
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