It is in times of greatest strain that people are faced with the clearest choices. Workers from all walks of life – blue collar to professional and urban to rural – are joining together with a renewed ambition to fight for the American Dream, as achieved through union membership.

The American labor movement experienced historic growth in 2007 when 311,000 workers across the United States became new union members. In 2008, membership increased by another 428,000 workers, for a second straight year of significant growth, leaving a total of 16.1 million union members in the United States.

Currently, the Montana AFL-CIO (home of the Montana labor movement) has 38,000 active union members. This is the highest union membership in Montana history. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American home houses 2.5 adults, and labor unions are now directly affecting the lives of more than 95,000 Montanans.

Previously, the highest Montana membership had been in the ’70s when the Montana AFL-CIO boasted 32,000 members. Back then, the largest union, with more than 6,000 members, was the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, which represented workers in the forest industry at lumber and sawmills and craftsmen. Over time, UBC experienced deep reductions in membership as those industries slowed and, in many cases, shut down. The United Steel Workers was another major union that was almost eliminated with the closures of the mines and smelters in Montana.

With the recent growth in unions, the USW has grown back to a membership of 2,500 Montana members. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is now the largest private sector union in Montana with 3,000 skilled tradesmen and women.

As the trade union work was in flux during the last 20 years, the biggest news in Montana union membership was in the growth of public employee unions. In 1972 there were only 2,000 public employee union members within the Montana AFL-CIO. Following the 2000 merger of the Montana Federation of Teachers and the Montana Education Association, the new MEA-MFT has become one of the largest unions in the Pacific Northwest with 17,500 educators, public employees, corrections staff, healthcare workers, and more. When the faculty and staff of MSU Bozeman joined MEA-MFT, Montana became the only state in the U.S. where the entire University System has union representation. Montana has the highest union density in the public employee sector in the country with about 95 percent of public employees having union representation.

In 2008, the flagship Montana Nurses Association with 2,500 members affiliated with the Montana AFL-CIO, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of the Service Employees International Union with 700 hundred new members. Through the leadership of the Montana AFL-CIO, workers and their unions all across Montana are more united now than they have ever been.

The most recent new affiliate members are at the Missoula City/County Health Department, Lake County Road and Bridge, Granite County Sheriff’s Department, Sydney Healthcare Center, Flathead County Dispatchers, Miles City’s Holy Rosary Healthcare and Montana State University Bozeman. In addition, 925 workers in Montana at seven different worksites are in the midst of organizing a union in their workplace right now.

JIM GARVEY - Guest Column

Labor Day is a tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. Throughout history, union members working collectively lead the way to important gains on the job and in our communities. Unions passed laws that prevent child labor and defined the work day and overtime pay. Labor established workplace safety standards and defined prevailed wages.

In Montana, unions won an annual cost of living increase in the minimum wage and created new positions to ensure proper wage practices. Perhaps most significantly, labor created public education … so no matter the circumstance at birth every child has a chance at a better quality of life.

However, much work still remains. Montana has the second highest jobsite fatality rate in the country. Working women are paid 79 cents for every dollar a man makes for doing the same job. Too many employers are misclassifying the work of prevailed wage jobs which shorts workers out of their rightful wages. Many restaurants are dipping into the tips of servers who have a legal right to their gratuities, unencumbered by employer policies. Immigrant workers are being pitted against our own Montana workers in competition for jobs. The demand for worker training in new processes for the green economy is imminent. All together too many families have no health coverage at all and our workers who try to form unions are having their rights and protections violated by corporations that pay CEOs 350 times more than their workers. The result of all this is lower wages, less workplace safety and weakened local economies.

Montana needs sustainable jobs with healthcare, retirement benefits and good working conditions. Thriving businesses create opportunities for such jobs. Business and Labor are two sides of the same coin, inevitably connected, both subject to the success or failures of their individual worksite and the broader marketplace. In Montana, labor will continue to work with employers to reach common goals.

Union apprenticeship programs – the finest training programs in the world - have been on the front lines of preparing workers for ever-changing needs for decades and will continue to provide the ready workforce that this new generation demands.

Today, unions may be more relevant to all people than they have ever been. Unions are working on the most important piece of labor legislation in the last thirty five years. The Employee Free Choice Act will increase penalties on employers who intimidate workers that support unions and aim to stall contract negotiations, and it will give workers a choice on how they want to form a union. Labor is also working to pass one of the most important pieces of legislation of our time, healthcare reform with a public option. Its passage will provide access to quality, affordable coverage for those who have no other means of coverage and set parameters for the way insurance companies provide coverage.

As the stewards of working families, the Montana AFL-CIO and its leaders pay tribute this Labor Day to the dedicated and diligent working families of Montana and renew the union commitment to increase Montana’s middle class.

Jim McGarvey is executive secretary of the Montana AFL-CIO.