Full at http://cheapmotelsandahotplate.org/2012/11/12/the-state-of-the-unions/
The AFL-CIO and most member unions went all-out for Obama, doing their usual get-out-the-vote phone banking, canvassing, and radio advertising. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put 100,000 volunteers in the field the last few days of the campaign. Labor’s message spread fear of Romney’s overt anti-union, anti-worker views and praised Obama’s supposed pro-union, pro-worker policies. Obama’s propaganda, echoed by organized labor, claimed to have saved tens of thousands of jobs in the auto industry, and this resonated in states like Ohio, which has a heavy concentration of automobile-related employment. Labor supporters of Obama also emphasized his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, Obamacare, and the expansionary fiscal policies that helped prevent a full-scale economic meltdown following the collapse of the housing markets. After Obama’s victory, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said that labor’s efforts were decisive for the president’s victories in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Unfortunately, neither Trumka nor SEIU president Mary Kay Henry demanded a quid pro quo for their members’ hard work.
We will never know what a Romney administration would have done to working people, and it is impossible to say what the exact impact of Obama’s policies on the working class has been. However, we can say two things. First, the labor movement has continued its march to economic and political irrelevance during the president’s initial term, faring slightly worse than during a similar period under George W. Bush. During the first three years of the Obama administration (2009, 2010, 2011), union density fell from 12.3% to 11.8%, a decline of 4.1%. For the first three years of the George W. Bush presidency (2001, 2002, 2003), density went from 13.3% to 12.9%, a drop of 3%. Union membership declined by 563,000 during the Obama years, and 520,000 for Bush. So all of those wonderful things Obama did for workers didn’t translate into more union members or higher union density.