In the Bureau of Labor Statistics report there were some interesting Washington State specific numbers too.
The report states that “All states in the Middle Atlantic and Pacific divisions reported union membership rates above the national average” with northeastern states pulling down good numbers too. (Which confirms the theory that labor is pretty much just a regional power these days, contrary to the “big labor” narrative FOX “News” likes to tote.)
Washington State, meanwhile, is one of the only four states with unionization rates about 20 percent (20.2 to be exact), along with New York with 25.2 percent, Hawaii with 23.5 percent and Alaska (!) with 22.3 percent. Any theories as to why that might be?
Boeing and longshoreman?
The west also has more fed jobs per capita, fwiw.
Plus, we’re not stupid like they are back East.
Actually, the reason is crystal-clear: Washington state has too many government workers.
Number of government employees in Washington at the end of 2009: 549,000. Number of unionized employees in Washington at the end of 2009: 574,000.
You say too many. I say not enough.
Let’s call in the Chinese sovereign wealth funds and let them decide, shall we, DW?
Seattle has a strong pro-union history:
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/stri…
It’s not surprising at all.
#3 you’re telling me there’s only 25,000 union members in this state that aren’t government employees?
I call bullshit.
DW, taxfoundation.org puts Wa State employees at 527 per 10,000 people, (only 12 states have smaller ratios). Of course any number greater than zero is probably too big a number for you.
Let’s face it, DW hates us so much, he doesn’t care that Forbes ranks Washington state as the second best place in America to run a business.
That’s how anti-capitalist he is.
Will @ 4: Actually, why don’t we just drop the value statements and agree on the basic facts. Washington state has an unusually high unionization rate because an unusually high fraction of its population are government employees, compared to other states. That statement is true and not value-laden.
It is not primarily because of Boeing, which has 72,000 employees in Washington, only a minority of which are unionized. It is certainly not primarily due to the longshormen, whose number are tiny. It is not primarily due to union history; the private sector in Washington has had no problem pushing unionization far below rust belt levels, despite the wobblies. It is almost entirely accounted for by the fact that the vast majority of those 550,000 government employees are unionized.
W7ngman @ 6: That’s not exactly what I’m claiming, because not all those government employees are unionized. But the overwhelming majority of them are. After making that adjustment, you are not calling bullshit on me; you are calling bullshit on the bureau of labor statistics. Follow the links.
For DW, Washington being in the *bottom third* of all states for number of govt. employees per population is “an unusually high fraction…compared to other states”.
Yeah. Ok.
The complete lack of commute traffic last Monday on what is essentially a government and bank only holiday is what demonstrated to me how many people work government jobs in western wash. Yikes.
DW, the fact that WA has a higher percentage of union members has almost nothing to do with government. Most government workers in most states are union, including police, firefighters, teachers, etc. In this regard, we are really no different than other states, so this does not account for the difference.
WA has Boeing, one of the largest manufacturers left in the country, with a huge number of unionized employees. We have one of the largest shipping ports in the country, also mostly union labor.
And we are not completely dominated by Walmart. Fred Meyer still uses union labor. As do many of the grocery store chains.
@12 – I’ll tell the university and college students, all the many tens of thousands of them that they don’t exist according to you.
Maybe they’ll spend their sales tax dollars elsewhere and force you to pick up the slack …
Slogin @ 11: I don’t know where you get your “bottom third” number, but it isn’t from the BLS. If you take the BLS numbers for total employment and government employment from here, divide government employment by total employment to get the fraction of workers employed by government, and rank the states, you’ll find that Washington is in the top third with a government employment fraction of 19.4%.
Who else is up there with it? Well, Alaska (26.4%) and Hawaii (21.1%), to cite two other states Jake called out for having high percentages of unionization.
And who is at the bottom? Not all red states. Massachusetts (13.5%) and Minnesota (15.7%), for example, are down in the bottom third.
(It is just possible that the difference is accounted for by the differences in labor force participation, since I’m quoting government workers / all workers and you quoted governemnt workers / population. But in that case all workers is the better denominator, because that is the denominator for union penetration.)
I haven’t yet dug up the BLS numbers of unionization only for private sector workers. But I’m willing to enter into a $50 bet with anyone on this post that Washington is not in the top third of states for private sector unionization.
“Any theories as to why that might be?”
Because we’re awesome!
@14 what?
Thank goodness for government jobs.
Jake, when are you going to call Liz at the Guild and organize the Stranger?
we’re not right to work.