Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics released their annual report on union density in the United States. Microcosmically, the numbers remain relatively unchanged, showing a slight dip from 12.4 percent last year to 12.3 percent this year, presumably as a result of general recession-related job losses. (Private sector unionization rates slipped from 7.6 to 7.2.) Macrocosmically, the numbers say the thing they’ve been saying for decades: America’s labor movement is hurting. Badly. And I doubt that the Employee Free Choice Act or anything short of a miracle will return its formal glory.

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, one of Obama’s strongest departmental picks, issued a statement responding to the numbers:

The data also show the median usual weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary union members were $908 per week, compared to $710 for workers not represented by unions. Union members earn 28 percent more than their non-union counterparts.

When coupled with data showing that union members have access to better health care, retirement and leave benefits, these numbers make it clear that union jobs are good jobs.

As workers across the country have seen their real and nominal wages decline as a result of the recession, these numbers show a need for Congress to pass legislation to level the playing field to enable more American workers to access the benefits of union membership. This report makes clear why the administration supports the Employee Free Choice Act.

Talking up unions. Check. Hat tip to EFCA. Check. Not a news release we would have seen out of the Bush incarnation of the Labor Department (DoL).

But besides a newly worthwhile DoL, unions don’t have much to smile about. 7.2 percent private sector unionization rate is abysmally low. Organizing new workers on a mass scale is practically impossible in today socio-political climate, an issue that EFCA is meant to address. (For an excellent analysis of the rationale behind the bill, check out TA Frank’s year old Washington Monthly article.)

But EFCA? In my semi-professional; opinion: so dead. I didn’t have confidence in it passing before the Coakley disaster, and now with Congressional Democrats fleeing in terror from corporate-friendly healthcare reform, I don’t see much hope. And with the closing of that window of opportunity, future attempts at labor law reform have likely been stymied as well. With every Democratic administration, Congress usually gets one opportunity to reform our nation’s broken labor laws. Attempts were made about every twelve to fifteen years, under Johnson, Carter, and Clinton. Each and every time they were defeated in the Senate. If EFCA is dead, Democrats will get a chance again in another twelve to fifteen years. At which point the private sector unionization rate will be…what? 5 percent, three percent? Less? There isn’t too much political leverage in those numbers.

5 replies on “Department of Labor: Union Density Unchanged since ‘08; Labor Screwed Anyway”

  1. Unfortunately, what the Democrats are succeeding at is keeping the public sector heavily unionized. That not only contributes, via a lack of incentives, to the poor performance of government workers. But it also creates a cozy relationship between the government workers and the politician employers. Instead of squeezing wages and outsourcing overseas to get as much work for as little money as possible, they have become politicial clients to be rewarded with ever higher numbers, pay, benefits, job security, and pensions.

  3. Public sector unions: extra pay, job security, work rules and pensions unrelated to performance…paid for by the rest of us (poor people pay taxes too). I’d rather focus on building the state’s economy as a whole rather than carving off a fraction of it for the permanently-employed class.

  5. Labor is screwed. It’s because the rank and file is not activated like it once was and the locals are too big and too corrupt to encourage dissent and/or healthy dialogue.

    That and society encourages blind and blatant individualism so the solidarity that grew the labor movement is long gone and near impossible to reattain. Workers have been segregated by pay, title and postition for so long that the bureaucracy won’t allow someone getting paid 18 bucks an hour get along with someone getting paid 18.5 bucks an hour with the title ‘lead’. Pathetic.

    We’re all scabs now and the EFCA won’t help even if it were passed.

Comments are closed.