The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

In 1929 only about 10 percent of workers were members of unions, but by 1945 that figure had risen to about 35 percent. Probably an even larger fraction of Americans were members of a union family, and during this period unions enjoyed wide public approval. Gallup polls showed union supporters steadily outnumbered critics by more than three to one throughout the three decades from 1936 to 1966.79 It was a period in which most Americans had come to appreciate the virtues of solidarity. FIGURE 2.12: UNION MEMBERSHIP, 1890–2015 Source: Freeman, “Spurts in Union Growth”; Hirsch and Macpherson, “Unionstats.” Data LOESS smoothed: .2. See endnote 2.80. By the 1960s, however, membership rates in unions (and their social and cultural salience, to which we shall return in Chapter 4) had begun a long, seemingly inexorable slump, so that by the 2010s unions were left with substantial membership only in the public sector (especially among teachers),