Unions prevailed in 641 National Labor Relations Board elections during the first half of the year, the largest number of victories for that six-month span in almost two decades, according to Bloomberg Law’s NLRB Election Statistics: Midyear 2022 report.

Bloomberg Law’s analysis found that labor successfully organized 43,150 workers from January through June 2022, compared with 36,942 for all of 2021.

Of the union victories in elections covering more than 1,000 workers, Amazon.com Services had the most at 8,325 workers, although the results had not been certified by the NLRB. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was next, with 3,823 employees, followed by Kaiser Permanente with 1,902 and Stanford Health Care with 1,450 new unionized workers.

Two hundred union victories for the first half of the year were among Starbucks employees. These victories added only 5,313 workers to the ranks of unionized labor, however, because the average bargaining unit for a Starbucks cafe is 27 people.

Bloomberg Law, Aug. 23