REPRINT: Union membership in South Dakota receding as private-sector workforce expands
Ahead of Labor Day weekend, private unions report fewest numbers in decades
Editor’s Note: This story appeared in the inaugural issue of The Dakota Scout. Since the vast majority of our readers have subscribed in the months since, and because the subject matter is still relevant, we are reposting for this Labor Day.
When he was 19, Duwayne Wohlleber landed what was considered a plum job in the early 1970s at the John Morrell plant in Sioux Falls.
Positions there were hard to come by, required solid references and a bit of luck.
Despite the exclusivity, Wohlleber came to realize that workers at the plant needed protection, and that led him to join the same union that represented thousands of Sioux Falls meatpacking employees who came before and after him.
Now, with nearly 50 years of unionized work under his belt, Wohlleber told The Dakota Scout ahead of this year’s Labor Day weekend that the need for organized labor unions remains – especially in the meatpacking industry.
“There are certain areas that function really well without a union,” said Wohlleber, whose 40-plus-year career at the Sioux Falls plant included its purchase by current owner Smithfield Foods. “They have caring and compassionate bosses. There are other industries that should always have a union because they take advantage of their workers.”
Following his retirement, and as the former president of the South Dakota AFL-CIO who now performs consultant work, he’s watched firsthand as the role of unions in the U.S. workforce has declined.
According to federal labor statistics, fewer workers are taking Wohlleber’s path in the labor movement.
Union membership in the private sector has been stagnant or decreasing nationwide, and in the Mount Rushmore State, it’s at its lowest point in decades.
For contrast, there were 25,705 union members in South Dakota reported by unions to the U.S. Department of Labor in 2000. That number had fallen to 22,413 by 2021, a 13 percent drop.
That’s the sixth lowest percentage of union members among wage and salary earners for any state in the country, and less than half the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Meanwhile, South Dakota’s pool of wage and salary employees increased by 18 percent during the past two decades.
Yet despite unions’ dwindling influence both in South Dakota and across the country, the labor movement is still celebrated here and everywhere else in the U.S. as the unofficial end to summer.
Labor’s mixed history in South Dakota
Labor Day is marked each year by the first Monday of September. As a legal holiday, it owes its existence to James Kyle, a U.S. senator who represented South Dakota. In 1893, Kyle, a member of the now defunct Populist Party, introduced legislation making that Monday a legal holiday. The bill was signed a year later by President Grover Cleveland.
The legal status was, according to the South Dakota Historical Society Foundation, a recognition of an informal observance of Labor Day that was already being practiced. Labor interests sought better pay, shorter work conditions and safer working conditions. Kyle’s formal recognition would allow workers to enjoy a shared day of vacation.
In the early 20th century, South Dakota had an active labor movement through itinerant farmhands known as hobo workers, said Matthew Pehl, a former professor at Augustana University who researched the labor movement in the state.
But without a strong industrial working class, the labor movement lacked a base for expansion, and it never exerted power in the way it did in other states, he said.
By the mid-1940s, anti-labor forces were eyeing South Dakota as a testing ground to introduce legislation to restrict unions. The effort came at an opportune time for oil companies and the National Association of Manufacturers, which were attempting to push back gains made by the labor movement.
In 1945, the United Auto Workers went on strike, which persisted into 1946. That strike, Pehl said, spilled into the farm machinery industry. Suddenly, farmers in the Midwest felt that they were being held hostage by the strikes.
“There is a lot of anger among farmers in the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska at striking auto workers, because it made it hard for farmers to get their implements,” he said.
At about the same time, members of the Teamsters in Rapid City were accused of assaulting non-union truck drivers.
“Since that time, labor has not had a good reputation in South Dakota,” Pehl said. “It’s always been seen as a little shady.”
Against that backdrop, anti-union lawmakers in South Dakota referred right-to-work language to the ballot in 1946. It won by a landslide, with 70 percent of voters siding with the anti-union campaign. That ballot language amended the state Constitution to say: “The right of persons to work shall not be denied or abridged on account of membership or non-membership in any labor union, or labor organization.”
The amendment made South Dakota the first state in the nation to adopt right-to-work legislation. Others would follow.
Pehl said South Dakota served as a “guinea pig” for anti-union interests.
“That essentially was what you are seeing with right-to-work laws in the 1940s, and South Dakota was the vanguard of that,” he said.
The decline of civic involvement
Right-to-work hobbled the growth of unions in the state, but in some industries organized labor held its own. That included the meatpacking industry.
But even there, unions faced challenges. Wohlleber was a union member at Morrell’s during the 1987 strike that turned violent. Workers were protesting safety violations, pay and hours. When the strike finally ended, workers returned to find they had to sign contracts, Wohlleber said. The union’s strength had been sapped, an impact that still lingers today.
“The union hasn’t rattled its saber since,” he said.
By a different metric, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 304, which represents Smithfield Foods employees, has been a success. While overall union membership in the state has receded over the decades, the UFCW’s local has increased. In 2000, the union reported fewer than 1,900 members to the federal government. Its 2021 membership figure was nearly 3,000.
B.J. Motley, the UFCW’s Local 304 president, credits the growth to staying engaged in his workers’ community. Smithfield employs a diverse group of employees, many of them immigrants.
“I can’t speak for others,” he said. “But in our union, we engage in a lot of community services.”
Motley and the union gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Smithfield plant became the nation’s leading hotspot of infection in April 2020. The union pushed Smithfield to adopt safety protocols and criticized federal regulators for not doing more to protect essential workers.
Motley said his union has volunteers to keep its membership engaged. While workplace issues over safety, pay and benefits are important, it’s also important to give members a shared place of community.
“We’re trying to be like family, and it seems to be working,” he said.
When Wohlleber joined the union, it was a social organization on par with civic groups like the Elks Club or Kiwanis. There were events that engaged the community and union membership. As unions fail to be engaged members of their community, so, too, do their membership numbers.
“The unfortunate part, I kind of blame part of it on the unions themselves,” Wohlleber said. “A lot of it is people paying union dues, and they don’t want to do anything more. In other days, there were more activities. You’ve got to keep people active. You’ve got to keep them involved.
Well tbh the unions insurance is garage. As a member of the IBEW in town I can attest to this. Most private companies have substantially better insurance policies.
You have don’t have to pay of pocket with the union, and your wages are covered on top of it... but there are pretty competitive wages in the low voltage (Tel-com) industry at the varying companies.
Electricians also get substantially better fringe benefits than us tel-com workers do.
It’s not all bad.
But there are definitely incentives with other companies in the private sector, such as bonuses, which are virtually non existent in the union.