Union membership plummeted in 2012 to the lowest level since the Depression, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The membership rate dropped to 11.3 percent from 11.8 percent, while total membership fell by roughly 400,000 workers, largely due to massive layoffs of teachers, firefighters, and other public employees.

Anti-labor measures passed by Republican-controlled governments in historic union strongholds have also played a part in dwindling membership:

Losses in the public sector are hitting unions particularly hard since that has been one of the few areas where membership was growing over the past two decades. About 51 percent of union members work in government, where until recently, there had been little resistance to union organizing. That began to change when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a law in 2011 eliminating most union rights for government workers. The state lost about 46,000 union members last year, mostly in the public sector.
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In Indiana, where a new right-to-work law took effect last March, the state lost about 56,000 union members. The law prohibits unions from requiring workers to pay union fees, even if they benefit from a collective bargaining agreement. Michigan lawmakers approved a similar measure in December.

Union membership has been on the decline since the 1980s, with drastic consequences for middle-class Americans. As unions shed members, middle-class incomes have shrunk and income inequality has soared.

While weakened unions are not the sole cause of these trends, employers have gained an outsized advantage in the labor market. Some companies have threatened to do away with benefits if employees even ask about forming a union. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers continue to strip workers’ protections, despite the fact that anti-union laws tend to be deeply unpopular with the public.

According to an analysis of Current Population Survey data by Matt Bruenig, the number of workers exercising their right to strike has plummeted since the 1970s:

Forty years ago, “an average of 289 major work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers occurred annually in the United States. By the 1990s, that had fallen to about 35 per year. And in 2009, there were no more than five.” Declining unionization certainly plays a role in this drop, but as Chris Rhomberg, associate professor of sociology at Fordham University, wrote, so too does labor law that gives employers all the advantages. “We have essentially gone back to a pre-New Deal era of workplace governance,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, lockouts — when management bars employees from working — are on the upswing, and now “represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages,” according to Bloomberg BNA.

As the number of union workers has declined in recent years, so too has the middle-class’ share of income. Income inequality has spiked during the same timeframe. Bucking the trend, workers at Walmart and New York City fast food establishments, as well as Chicago’s teachers, recently walked off the job in protest of working conditions.

Unless a deal is reached with management, some 14,000 East Coast port workers plan to go on strike on Sunday, affecting ports from Boston to Miami. Here’s what you need to know about the impending strike:

1) Management wants to cut workers’ pay. The largest sticking point in the negotiations between the port workers and a coalition of companies known as the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) is a payment to workers for each container they unload. Instituted in the 1960s, the payments are meant as compensation for the mechanization of America’s ports, which allows one worker today to do what used to take three workers. As the New York Times explained, “The companies want to freeze those payments for current longshoremen and eliminate them for future hires.” The companies also want to cut future raises for workers to below the rate of inflation.

2) Port workers are highly skilled. The companies claim that workers are paid too much, rendering east coast ports uncompetitive. But the workers — whose numbers have dropped from 35,000 to 3,500 due to automation — are highly trained and “cannot be easily replaced.” They also do not work consistent hours. According to the union, “longshore labor cost amounts to between 3% and 4% of the shipper’s total cost.”

3) The economic impact could be significant…or not. As Brad Plumer explained in the Washington Post, it’s hard to figure out the economic impact of port closures. Estimates place the impact of a 2002 West Coast port closure at $1 billion per day, but the cost may have actually been far less than that.

4) Businesses are using political pressure to entice workers to cave. Business leaders and right-wing governors are urging the White House to invoke special powers to end the strike, should workers walk out. President Obama, for his part, urged the two sides to forge an agreement “as quickly as possible.”

The strike would be the first at East Coast ports since 1977.

Walmart staves off unionization attempts in its stores by telling workers who ask about forming a union that they may lose benefits and vacation time, a potential violation of American labor law that could further inflame relations between the company and workers who picketed its stores on Black Friday and have been attempting to organize.

Walmart workers and labor advocates held protests outside the chain’s stores throughout Thanksgiving weekend, protesting the low wages it pays its workers. The company, which paid its chief executive $18.1 million and made $15 billion in profits last year, has fought off union attempts before, and now it tells its workers that unionization could lead to the loss of bonuses and vacation time, a spokesperson told Bloomberg Businessweek:

Walmart has been opposed to unions since Sam Walton opened his first store in Rogers, Ark., in 1962. These days, “we have human resources teams all over the country who are available to talk to associates, and we will get questions about joining a union,” says David Tovar, a spokesman for the company. “We would say: ‘Let us remind you of all that Walmart offers, and of what might go away. Quarterly bonuses might go away, vacation time might go away.’ ”

Such tactics may not be illegal by themselves because they can be seen as predicting outcomes rather than threatening them, The Nation’s Josh Eidelson reported today. But the implication of such a “prediction” — that joining a union could be followed by actions resembling retaliation — is quite clear. Walmart’s anti-labor practices aren’t new: in 2008, the store’s workers spoke out about anti-union meetings they were forced to attend.

Though Walmart has long fought organization efforts in the United States, it sometimes lets workers in other countries unionize — particularly when unionization is contingent on Walmart getting to enter a new country. In the U.S. though, it has responded to unionization efforts by shutting down departments, fighting legislative improvements to labor law, and now, telling workers that joining a union may cost them their bonus.

Not content to push through an anti-union “right-to-work” law, new restrictive abortion policies, and an anti-Sharia law, Michigan Republicans are now pursuing a revamp of a law voters rejected at the polls barely more than a month ago.

Michigan’s House Republicans today passed a new version of the “emergency manager” law that voters repealed via ballot referendum in November. The initial version gave broader powers to state-appointed emergency managers who oversee townships that are struggling financially.

Among those powers was the ability to void union contracts and labor agreements. The new version, introduced by state Rep. Al Pscholka (R), makes small changes but still includes the provision granting the manager authority over labor contracts, as the Detroit Free Press reports:

The bill says an emergency manager will have the power to undertake “the modification, rejection, termination and renegotiation of contracts.”

The ability for an emergency manager to break or terminate collective bargaining agreements under certain circumstances was one of the most controversial aspects of PA 4.

But Pscholka said a key difference is that the new bill “gives a choice to local officials … on how to keep their heads above water.”

The new law does make changes that give localities more input with their emergency managers, and it includes a provision that gives local officials the option of choosing mediation or bankruptcy over the appointment of a manager once a financial emergency is declared. It also allows localities to remove the emergency manager a year later by a two-thirds vote from the local government.

But by leaving the broad powers over labor contracts intact in the new version, Michigan Republicans are again taking aim at the state’s unions. And they’re doing so in direct opposition to the state’s voters, given that such powers were “one of the most controversial aspects” of the repealed version.

Just as they did with the “right-to-work” law, Republicans attached an appropriations measure to the bill to make it tougher to overturn with a ballot referendum.

Union workers who were protesting the passage of so-called “right-to-work” laws outside the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan are “terrorists,” according to a former high-ranking official in the Republican Party of Virginia who now serves in a county-level elected office.

Shawn Kenney, who formerly served as the communications director for the state GOP and is now the chairman of the Fluvanna Co. Board of Supervisors, posted an entry on his blog titled, “We Don’t Negotiate With (Union) Terrorists.” The post features a video of a brief fight that occurred outside the Michigan state capitol. Before the video, Kenney writes: “…and these people are terrorists.”

The video, the subject of numerous Fox News segments aimed at ginning up anti-union sentiment among the conservative base, shows an isolated fight between union protesters and Steven Crowder, a Fox News contributor who was punched during the dispute. A state employee (who is represented by a union) who witnessed Crowder’s earlier interactions with the crowd while passing by told the Huffington Post that Crowder appeared to be provoking the workers and there is evidence showing that the video may have been selectively edited to portray union members in a negative light. “There was no question he was there just to start a fight, to start some kind of trouble,” the witness said. Crowder admitted to HuffPost that he “definitely provoked them,” but said he did it by “asking them basic questions” and “didn’t expect to be assaulted.”

While it is unfortunate that any violence occurred, local media reports and police painted a picture of the protests that didn’t quite resemble “terrorism.” The protests, which included at least 10,000 workers, were “mostly peaceful” according to media reports, and the Michigan State Police said just three arrests were made.

Another former Republican Party of Virginia official wrote on the same blog this week that by passing “right-to-work,” Michigan had “finally unshackle[d] itself from slavery.”

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was happy to sign the union-busting “right-to-work” bill this week, saying that the law would help create jobs in his state. But in an interview with American Public Media on Thursday, Snyder was hard-pressed to give good reasons for why, exactly, the bill would inspire companies to move into Michigan and create new jobs.

Pressed by Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to explain what proof Snyder had that Michigan would see a job boom as a result of the law, the Governor cited neighboring Indiana’s recent job numbers as his only evidence:

SNYDER: This is about more and better jobs coming to Michigan. If you look at Indiana, they did similar legislation in February. And literally, thousands of new jobs are coming to Indiana where this was a major consideration in companies’ decision to move to that state.

HOBSON: Are you saying then that companies decided to go to Indiana, for example, because there’s less union membership in Indiana?

SNYDER: No, and I don’t want to speak for the companies but it is very clear that companies are looking at Indiana that previously did not. [...]

HOBSON: Well, make that connection though. You’re saying that, by not requiring workers to pay union dues, that therefore companies are going to be more attracted to the state. Why would that be?

SNYDER: Well, that’s a question for the companies but there is a strong sense, and companies do look at that. That’s something we’ve suffered here.[...]

HOBSON: Union membership has fallen dramatically in Michigan and across the country and it’s not as though that has translated into some boom in employment. I see the point you’re making, but it hasn’t been borne out in the evidence, has it?

SNYDER: Well, it’s been borne out in the Indiana case.

Listen:

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that right-to-work will cost all Michigan workers — not just those in unions — an average of $1,500 a year, and that there is “no relationship” between right-to-work laws and employment rates.