Old-timers swear that a lot of things were better when they were younger - and when it comes to unions and Labor Day celebrations, they may have a point.

The peak of union influence over the last century took place in 1953, when 36 percent of private sector workers in the U.S. were unionized. In January 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that private sector union membership had dropped in 2006 to 7.4 percent (12 percent if government workers are included).

Union membership numbers in the U.S. have been steadily declining - and they might get worse before they get better. In Michigan the BLS said in January that our state's private/public unionization rate continued to decline, from 21 percent in 2005 to 19.6 percent (or 879,000 union workers) in 2006.

Still, Michigan has the sixth highest union penetration percentage in the nation - and there's expected to be a strong push by the business community to knock that ranking down a few pegs by bringing a right-to-work ballot initiative to Michigan, perhaps as early as next year.

"Those who want to fix Michigan only by seeking to attract businesses to a low-wage state have it wrong," said Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney. "Families need adequate income to have a high quality of life. Trying to reduce our way to prosperity by cutting wages and benefits and weakening unions just doesn't work."

The concept that history repeats itself is probably most appropriate when looking at the labor movement over the last century. In the first half of the century, the nation had an economic system that didn't provide health insurance or pension plans for workers - and unions were weaker until after World War II.

After the war, with the resurgence of union clout, came a system of employer-provided health insurance and pensions that became the norm.

Now, with the federal government looking on, the system is shifting away from employer-backed health insurance and pensions. More than 40 million Americans are now without health insurance, and increasingly, defined contribution pensions are being replaced with 401k plans as part of a conservative agenda for workers to take "ownership" of their money.

"It has gone in a circle hasn't it?" said Stan Arnold, 84, who led the Michigan State Building and Construction Trades Council from 1957 until his retirement in 1984. "Way back when, we fought to get the pay and the pensions and the health insurance. People in the unions today are fighting to keep those things."

Mack Cenahowicz, 88, a Taylor resident, recalled that when he was 16 he lied and said he was two years older in order to get hired into a nonunion metal finishing plant in 1936. "The pay wasn't great," he said of the Depression-era job, "and they worked the hell out of you."

He served in the Army Air Corps in World War II and eventually found work after the war as a union plumber in 1952.

"I got into the trades and it was automatically a better lifestyle," he said. "I bought a car, bought a house and was able to save some money.

"I don't think people in their 40s, 50s or 60s realize that bringing in the union in those days meant survival," Cehanowicz said. "Unions brought in a safety factor, the union meant that they couldn't treat you like cattle.

"Now all the jobs are going to countries where there are no unions. In my opinion, the workers in those countries who have gotten our jobs because of NAFTA and CAFTA are in the same situation that we were in during the 1930s. It will take time, but maybe those workers will be like we were, and realize they need a union, too."

Arnold said he had to have special "working papers" to work in the Lathers union as a 15-year-old in 1937 - "and the wages were nothing," he said. After he served as a Marine in World War II, he came home and worked his trade earning $1.72 per hour - "that was good money," he said, made possible by the union.

He said even as a union member, the only thing workers received from employers was a paycheck. The first benefit unions sought and won was vacation pay, then later a pension and health insurance.

"That was a time when we had to stand up with each other and demand improvements," Arnold said. "There was a lot of solidarity then, but it was a way of life. Of course we went to show solidarity at the Labor Day parades. It was the thing to do. Now they're trying to take away the pensions and the health care and lower the pay with right to work. It is like a cycle."