Alabama union membership declines amid aging workforce, outsourcing

Alabama’s union membership declined last year amid a broader decline of the workforce, the aging of union members and outsourcing. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Alabama’s total employment dropped from 2.110 million in 2024 to 2.090 million in 2025. Labor union representation fell from 140,000 in 2024 to 131,000, or from 6.6% of the workforce to 6.3%. The number of workers represented by unions also fell, from 165,000 in 2024 (7.8% of the workforce) to 150,000 (7.2%) in 2025. Nationwide, the unionization rate is 10%. 

Alabama was historically one of the most unionized states in the South, due to the number of manufacturing jobs available during the 1940s. As late as 2015, about 10% of the state workforce belonged to unions, though the numbers have been declining since. 

A study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign released last week estimated that nationwide, unions added over 400,000 members last year.

Bren Riley, president of the Alabama AFL-CIO, said in an interview last week the decrease can be attributed to the closing of factories, such as Goodyear’s plant in Gadsden.

The plant once employed up to 4,000 people, but when it closed in 2020, it had about 400 after Goodyear shifted production to North Carolina and Mexico. The Associated Pressreported that April that the plant “reached a deal with labor to shutter its plant at Gadsden for good.” A message seeking comment on the closure was left with Goodyear Friday morning.

“It took until 1943 to get a to get a union (at Goodyear’s Gadsden plant) and get a collective bargaining agreement, and the sad thing about it is, we’ve lost a lot of good union jobs in Alabama and the South, and it’s because sometimes greedy corporations care more about profits than they do paying a decent wage,” Riley said.

The aging of the state population is another factor. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2025, 19% of Alabama’s population was 65 or older. Riley said AFL-CIO is working to engage the younger population as well.

“We’ve got committees, we’ve got programs set up to reach out. We call it our next gen program, the next generation of union leaders,” he said.

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Riley also said campaigns against unions played a role. Workers at Mercedes-Benz in Vance in 2024 launched a campaign to organize under United Auto Workers, but ultimately lost the vote after a sustained campaign against the union by state and business leaders. 

“It scares them to death because in these organizing campaigns, they’ll take a guy like me that’s out in front of this organizing campaign, like working at Mercedes, they’ll fire me for being involved in that kind of stuff,” Riley said. “And then the union, on behalf of that fired person, they’ll get them several thousand dollars down the road, but what value is that to that plant floor? They (say) ‘hey, I ain’t gonna fool that union.’”

Riley said building community is important when trying to encourage others to unionize.

“If you had to go to church with them, you go to church … If you had to drink beer, you (drink beer). You gotta build a relationship with these folks,” he said.

Riley also said he was concerned for the direction of the workforce because of how rapidly technology is advancing.

“These data centers are going somewhere. You know, if they don’t come to Alabama, they’re gonna build them in Georgia,” Riley said. “What we want to do as labor is to make sure when they do come, by God, union folks build them and maintain them. There’s a lot of jobs building them, but after they’re built, how many jobs will it take to maintain them?”

Despite all of the challenges facing unions, Riley said AFL-CIO is “proud of what we do.”

“We’re proud of the work our folks do, and hopefully, and maybe we can get the message across to them (corporations) that we’re not the damn enemy. We want a partner,” he said.

Andrea Tinker writes for Alabama Reflector, a nonprofit news agency based in Montgomery.