State of the Unions 2023-CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies

 New Study Reveals Upsurge in Unionization and Strikes in Higher Education

This report released by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, State of the Unions 2023: A Profile of Organized Labor in New York City, New York State, and the United States, is a part of an annual publication series, documents recent trends in unionization patterns.

The overall level of unionization in both the City and State has been roughly double the national rate over the past two decades. But recently, union density has fallen more in New York City and New York State than in the United States as a whole. In the mid-2010s, both the City and State rates steadily hovered around 24 percent, but they began to fall after 2017. By 2022–23, only 17.7 percent of all wage and salary workers residing in the five boroughs of New York City, and 20.2 percent of those in the state, were union members.

This year’s report includes a special feature guest authored by CUNY’s National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, It analyzes the recent uptick in organizing and strikes among student-workers and faculty in higher education since January 2022.

Link to the Report: Union-Density-2023.pdf (cuny.edu)