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U.S. union membership numbers drop, so does optimism for rebound

Date Posted: February 18 2005

Unionists still enjoy a significant wage gap over their non-union colleagues, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average union worker makes $781 per week, while the average non-unionist makes $612. Overall, the average U.S. worker makes $638.

The long downward trend in union membership numbers continued in 2004, as the percentage of union membership among U.S. workers dropped nearly half a percentage point to 12.5 percent.

"The union membership rate has steadily declined from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available," said a Jan. 27 report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

However, at 19.6 percent, the U.S. construction industry continued to have among the highest unionization rates of any job category.

"The construction and manufacturing sectors are in a slightly better position than other unions, but all unions are pretty vulnerable right now," said Dr. Dale Belman, associate professor with Michigan State University's School of Labor and Industrial Relations. He said with competition brought on by globalization, pressure from anti-union lawmakers, stagnant wages and advances in technology that have led to job losses - "there are reasons American workers are not happy campers. And really, I don't see any reason for optimism for unions for the next 10 years."

Michigan continued to have among the top unionization rates in the nation. The BLS said four states had union membership rates over 20 percent in 2004: New York (25.3 percent); Hawaii (23.7 percent); Michigan (21.6 percent), and Alaska (20.1 percent).

Although Michigan's union workforce dropped by three-tenths of a percentage point from 2003 to 2004, the actual number of union members increased by 11,000 to 930,000, according to the BLS.

The BLS said unionists now represent 7.9 percent of all private workers, but 36.4 percent of public workers. For years, the only union growth has been in governments.

As American labor law is currently set up and interpreted, Belman said, "most workers would have to be in a suicidal mood if they want to organize a union at work - there's a very good chance of getting fired. Organizing new workers is getting to virtually impossible in some industries."

Four states reported union membership rates below 5 percent in 2004. North Carolina and South Carolina continued to record the lowest union membership rates, 2.7 and 3.0 percent,
respectively. Those two states have had the lowest union membership rates each year since 1995, when comparable state records began to be kept. Arkansas and Mississippi had the next lowest union membership rates, 4.8 percent each in 2004.

Including independent unions, organized labor had 15.5 million members in 2004. Almost precisely half live in just six states: California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, in that order.

Belman said that while numbers have continued to show that the American union base has been severely eroded -it's too early to start writing labor's obituary.

"The death of the labor movement has been regularly predicted over the years," Belman said. He pointed out that the U.S labor movement had been "thoroughly crushed" before - for example in the years before World War I - only to emerge with strength. Organized labor has been on a steady downswing since the height of U.S. worker power in the early 1950s, which means, Belman said, "during this period of history it has taken longer to crush it."

What will turn the tide for American workers and their unions - if the tide can be turned? "Every time unions have made a comeback, they have come back with a different movement," Belman said. The movement at various times has been spurred by riots, the Great Depresssion and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City when 146 people, many of them women and girls, were killed in a blaze because of locked exit doors.

In the future, perhaps workers will be moved to unions because of soaring health care costs or stagnant wages - which in real terms haven't increased in more than two decades when inflation is taken into account.

"I'm not an optimist about the labor movement," Belman said, "but history has shown that labor bounces back, and it bounces back in ways that people never expect."