National Unions are Bouncing Back—and Coming for State Legislatures

Harrisburg, Pa., September 7, 2026—The nation’s largest government unions are organizing new and unusual workplaces to overcome membership losses since the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case, according to the fifth edition of The Battle for Worker Freedom: Grading State Public Sector Labor Laws.

The report’s scope is twofold: It examines the sway of government unions across the 50 state legislatures and grades each state on how well it protects workers’ rights over union executives’ interests.

Nationwide, the four largest government unions—the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and AFSCME—are slowly replacing membership losses they incurred since 2018. These unions also report a collective gain of 232,502 members, or 3.5 percent since 2024.

Given their court losses in recent years, unions are organizing new “workplaces”—including graduate students, home-care workers, foster parents, and even prisoners—sometimes with the help of a change in state law. Simultaneously, union executives are lobbying for laws that restrict workers’ rights, including their ability to withdraw from union membership or to stop paying dues.

Union executives’ focus on membership recruitment splits the country between states that protect workers and states that cater to union interests. Thirteen states earned an A, up from 12 in the previous edition, and six states earned an F, up from five since 2024.

GRADE	NUMBER OF STATES	STATES
A+	7	Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas
A	6	Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wisconsin
B	10	Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming
C	2	Missouri and South Dakota
D	15	Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont
D-	4	Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Mexico
F	6	California, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington

Senior Director of Labor Policy for the Commonwealth Foundation, David Osborne, issued the following statement: 

“Government unions are rebounding after the 2018 Janus decision, which cut off a major—but unconstitutional—funding source for union executives. After the Supreme Court ended this affront to individual liberty, Big Labor turned its focus to a different playbook: state legislatures.

“Union executives are spending tens of millions of dollars to rewrite the rules of the game and bolster their political machine in every state, at the expense of freedom for government employees. 

“Some states passed laws that give union organizers personal contact information for all government employees—including home addresses, personal email addresses, personal cellphone numbers, bank account information, and even Social Security numbers. Unions use that sensitive information to recruit and harass public employees, send them political materials, and initiate collections when they fail to pay dues.

“At the same time, they unethically trap union members to prevent them from withdrawing their membership, often with the blessing of state legislation.  “State lawmakers across the country must stand up against anti-freedom labor proposals to ensure that every American worker has the right to choose whether or not to associate with a union, without coercion or fear, and that their hard-earned dollars don’t fund a political agenda they don’t support.”