Pink Rose Society

Labor and Working-Class Politics in Ohio

Ohio's industrial and union history makes Labor and Working-Class Politics in Ohio a defining axis of its politics — and a place where voters and their legislature keep pulling in opposite directions. Ohioans have twice gone to the ballot to protect union power, while the Statehouse supermajority keeps trying to weaken it. Heading into 2026, organized labor is the clearest line dividing the two parties' economic appeals.

Union strength, above average but sliding

  • Ohio's union membership rate was 12.5% in 2023, 12.1% in 2024, and about 11.6% (provisional) in 2025 — roughly 605,000 members, down about 36,000 in two years.
  • That still runs about two points above the national rate (10.0% in 2025), a legacy of Ohio's auto, steel, building-trades, and public-sector unions. The trend, though, is a slow decline.

The ballot has protected labor twice

  • Ohio is not a right-to-work state. Voters rejected right-to-work in 1958 by roughly two to one.
  • In 2011, Governor Kasich's Senate Bill 5 would have gutted public-sector collective bargaining for about 400,000 workers. Voters repealed it as Issue 2 that November, about 61%–39%, after a labor coalition gathered a record 1.3 million signatures. Public workers' bargaining rights remain protected under state law.
  • Yet in October 2025, Statehouse Republicans introduced a trio of anti-union bills — private-sector right-to-work, a ban on Project Labor Agreements, and a prevailing-wage opt-out. They are introduced and pending, not law, but they mark the direction of travel against a demonstrated voter majority — a recurring Democracy and Institutions (Ohio) pattern the state shares with Reproductive Rights in Ohio and Cannabis Policy in Ohio.

Organizing, 2023–2026

  • The 2023 UAW "Stand Up" strike landed hard in Ohio: Toledo's Stellantis Jeep complex was among the first plants out, and the 44-day fight won a 25% base wage increase and ended the permanent-temp tier. GM also folded its Ultium battery workers in Lordstown into the national UAW contract — a structural win — at roughly 30% raises. Within a year, some of those same Toledo and Lordstown workers faced layoffs: real gains, contingent security.
  • Starbucks Workers United made Ohio a national hub, growing to 26-plus union stores by early 2025 across Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, and beyond. Nurses picketed at Salem Regional and OSU Wexner over staffing and pay.

Wages: the automatic raise, and the one that got away

  • Ohio's minimum wage is constitutionally indexed to inflation, rising to $11.00 an hour on January 1, 2026. That escalator is the only automatic raise most low-wage workers get.
  • A 2024 push to raise it to $15 and end the tipped subminimum failed to reach the ballot, falling short on signatures by the July deadline. It was an organizing failure, not a voter rejection — the question never went to Ohioans at all.

Why it matters in 2026

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