An Anemic and Unhealthy Union Movement
Here is one that the Republicans have won over the past fifty years.
The BlS reports:
Union Members Summary: In 2010, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers be- longing to unions declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 per- cent....
The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent).... In 2010, 7.6 million public sector employees belonged to a union, compared with 7.1 million union workers in the private sector.
A union movement that is predominantly a public-employees movement is not, I think, sustainable in America.
