The power of unions and the number of members continued to increase through the early 1900s and peaked when the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 was enacted; allowing workers to legally strike and boycott their employers. It continued to rise during the New Deal age in America, following the Great Depression, until World War II. It then became illegal for workers to go on strike during the war as it affected war production, so the number of members dropped as did labor union’s popularity in general. However, after the war’s end the American Federation of Labor (AFL) merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955, to spearhead the labor force in the late 1940s-50s and this increased the number of members greatly and the power of unions in the greater …show more content…
Unions provide a reason for companies to grapple with maintaining wages. Left alone, capitalism’s natural inclination is to hack away” (Presley-Noble). Capitalism is the economic and political system that allows a country’s trade and industry to be controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state (Crampton). Although America is becoming more capitalistic some still agree with Williams and unions continue attempting to remain a force in today’s workplace despite their struggle with society. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of workers in unions in the public sector is five times higher than in the private sectors- 34.4% versus 6.4% of workers. The median salary for union workers does remain 20% higher than those not in a union, and in 2016 the median weekly salary for union members was $1,008 versus a nonunion member’s median weekly salary of $802. The occupations with the highest union membership percentage are education, training, library occupations, and protective service occupations, where over 34% of workers are in a union. However, the numbers are gradually declining from 2015 to 2016 the number of people nationally in a union declined 0.4% or by 240,000