For nearly five years, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has gathered data on union membership through public records requests. Based on various states’ Freedom of Information laws, we ask for payroll information from state and local government employers — primarily state departments, school districts, public universities and county and city governments. Sending and tracking these requests is time-consuming, but the resulting data on public sector union membership are the most precise, accurate and timely of the available information.
We ask these public entities for annual payroll information that shows the number of workers paying dues or fees to a union. This information is precise because public employers must know which employees are covered by a union contract and which ones are paying dues or fees when calculating the amount for each employee’s paycheck. Nearly all public employers in these states deduct union dues and agency fees directly from employees’ paychecks and remit this to the appropriate union.
The Mackinac Center has collected data each year on public sector union membership in the 22 non-right-to-work states affected by the 2018 Janus decision. This involves filing more than 600 public records requests with the largest government entities in those states. These include unionized employees of state governments, and workers employed by the largest cities, counties and public school districts in these states. The data collected covers 3.3 million of the 5.6 million public workers employed in unionized workplaces in these non-right-to-work states.
We ask two questions: 1) How many workers does your public entity employ who are covered by a union contract? and 2) How many workers have union dues withheld?[*] From this data, we can calculate annual changes in union membership levels and the number of workers who have opted out of joining the union. This information then allows us to estimate the overall effect of the Janus decision across the 22 non-right-to-work states, such as on total public sector union revenue.
[*] This is the verbatim language we send to public employers: “Via your state's public records laws, I request the following information from the [state/city/school district/public entity] payroll for the first pay period of [month/year]: (1) The number of people (union members) who are having dues withdrawn from their paycheck; (2) The total number of people covered by collective bargaining agreements (union contracts).”