by Josh Soffler

The membership numbers seen here are pulled from the United States Department of Labor, Office of Labor-Management Standards Union Search webpage [1]. The data here were gathered from the union’s most recently submitted LM-2 form. Furthermore, the number was rounded to the nearest thousand for simplicity. Sometimes, these numbers can be skewed due to the inclusion or exclusion of retirees.

The table here presents a timeline for the major labor union conventions in the United States. AUD hopes that it can be used as a resource for union activists, reformers, and researchers to be aware of the democratic structures of the U.S. labor movement and how often they occur. This data can be used to strategize and coordinate reform efforts as well as a way to analyze the movement’s democratic structures as a whole. This research is built off of Chris Bohner’s work [2]“One Member, One Vote and Finance Unionism,” in which he highlighted upcoming union elections and the role of investing in new organizing. His data was gathered through union constitutions, union websites, and Department of Labor filings.

1. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/olms/public-disclosure-room
2 https://radishresearch.substack.com/p/one-member-one-vote-and-finance-unionism?r=gasv2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web#footnote-anchor-1-139430125