Union membership falls to 70-year low

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Detroit News:

Washington — The nation's unions lost 400,000 members in 2012 as the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a labor union fell to 11.3 percent, its lowest level since the 1930s - declining by 0.5 percent over the last year.

Michigan accounted for about 10 percent of the nation's loss of unionized workers as the Wolverine State fell to the seventh most-unionized state, from fifth in 2011.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the biggest hit was in public sector unions, where many states and cities have cut back on their unionized workforce.

Among public sector workers, 35.9 percent are in a union - down from 37.0 percent in 2011, as the public sector shed nearly 250,000 union workers.

The public sector union rate is more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers. In the private sector, 6.6 percent are unionized, down from 6.9 percent in 2011.

Union membership fell in 34 states.

In Michigan, union membership fell more sharply than the national average; It was down to 16.6 percent in 2012, compared with 17.5 percent in 2011. Michigan lost 42,000 union workers, falling to 629,000 in 2012.

The number of workers in Michigan represented by a union — but who were not members of that union — fell from 18.3 percent to 17.1 percent, or by 55,000 workers. By contrast, in 1970 Michigan had 1.2 million union workers representing 40 percent of the state's workforce.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the new figures were sobering.

"Working women and men urgently need a voice on the job today, but the sad truth is that it has become more difficult for them to have one, as today's figures on union membership demonstrate," Trumka said. "Union membership impacts every other economic outcome that matters to all workers — falling wages, rising health care costs, home foreclosures, the loss of manufacturing jobs and disappearing retirement benefits."

Trumka said "our still-struggling economy, weak laws and political as well as ideological assaults have taken a toll on union membership, and in the process have also imperiled economic security and good, middle class jobs."

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So have thug tactics and arrogance on the unions' part...