Union membership in Pennsylvania grew last year as membership nationwide dropped — a trend that has persisted for decades. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released union membership figures for 2018.

In Pennsylvania, 13.4 percent of employees were represented by a union last year, up slightly from 13 percent in 2017. We ranked 17th highest in the country last year for share of employees represented by unions.

Meanwhile, 12.6 percent of Pennsylvanians were actually members of unions in 2018, up from 12 percent the previous year.

The number of workers nationwide represented by a union fell .2 percentage points in 2018 to 11.7 percent. This number includes both union members and workers who aren't part of a union but are covered by a union or some sort of group contract. Moreover, the overall actual union membership rate ticked down slightly in 2018 to 10.5 percent. This number refers to members of a labor union or worker group similar to a union.

That small decrease is part of a larger decline in union membership that dates to the 1950s, according to Jeff Hirsch, a former National Labor Relations Board attorney who now teaches labor and employment law at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The union membership rate in 1983 was around 20 percent and in the 1950s, it was about double that, Hirsch told Patch this week. And while many factors contributed to that drop, Hirsch highlighted three that played an outsize role — globalism, weak labor laws and a cultural attitude that undermines unions.

The single largest factor in the decline of unions — globalism. Hirsch pointed to what happened to automakers unions in Detroit as the prime example of what's happened to unions. There were three major automobile manufacturers in America and it was relatively easy to organize those workers.

The UAW could get concessions, such as collective bargaining agreements, from all three manufacturers. They largely mimicked each other and none of the companies were at a competitive disadvantage with one another. That changed once they started competing with foreign car companies such as Toyota and Honda.

"All of a sudden that competition from an employer's perspective has gotten much broader," said Hirsch. "With the rise of globalism, it's much easier to offshore work or simply import products that you previously made yourself or gotten from a domestic producer."

That put enormous pressure on labor costs and effectively undermined the leverage of domestic unions, he said, noting that the labor union density rate — meaning the share of employees who are union members or are covered by a union — has fallen worldwide in that same time. In fact, many foreign car companies built plants in the South where states are largely not unionized. While Hirsch didn't want to call it "offshoring," he said that from a labor perspective, it was essentially just that.

"It's basically the same," he said, adding that there are lower wages in the South and a staunchly anti-union culture.

That cultural resistance to unions is another major factor unionization has declined overall, he said.

"The U.S. has got a kind of individualistic mindset in general," said Hirsch. "That's the exact opposite of what a union does. Unions gain strength and their power derives from the collective action of employees."

Moreover, Hirsch noted that most labor laws at the federal and state level are not pro-union. It's difficult to vote a union in and employers can do a lot to prevent that from happening.

"There is, frankly, a lot they can get away with, through both legal and illegal actions. So the legal hurdles are pretty high."

In contrast, countries like Germany are the exact opposite. They have a culture of working with unions and a largely integrated system. The automaker Volkswagen, for example, has union officials on its board of directors. Some industries also have forced collective representation known as works councils.

"I couldn't even imagine that being uttered here," Hirsch said with a laugh.

Some of the major American industries where unions had a strong presence have largely disappeared, along with their unions. This includes manufacturing and textiles. And as unions have gotten less prevalent, less and less people are familiar with the good things unions do. Namely, keep wages growing.

"You can see charts where the decline in unionism is matched almost exactly to the rise in inequality," said Hirsch. "And you don't want to read too much into a single chart, but it's pretty stark."

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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