Union membership in the United States rose last year by the largest amount in a quarter-century, a gain of 428,000 members, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Wednesday.þþThe bureau said that most of the new members were government employees and that the percentage of workers in unions rose to 12.4 percent of the overall work force last year, up from 12.1 percent in 2007.þþThe increase is bound to fuel an already feverish political debate over whether to enact a labor-backed bill that would make it easier for workers to unionize. Business groups that oppose the bill can point to the new report to argue that such legislation is unnecessary because unions are already growing under current law.þþBut union leaders said Wednesday that it remained far too difficult to unionize workers in the private sector. þþMost Democrats support the bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, saying that making it easier for unions to grow will help strengthen the nation’s middle class during tough economic times. But Republicans denounce the bill because it would give workers the right to gain union recognition as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted a union, rather than through secret-ballot elections.þþAccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 36.8 percent of government employees belong to unions, compared with just 7.6 percent of workers in the private sector. Typically, state and city officials do not fight unionization efforts, while private-sector employers, fearing higher labor costs, often vigorously resist organizing drives. þþThe bureau noted that the percentage of workers in unions has dropped from 20.1 percent in 1983, with the decline especially noteworthy among private-sector workers because of a sharp drop in manufacturing jobs as a result of plant closings and pressures from imports. The bureau said 11.4 percent of manufacturing workers, once the heart of organized labor, were in unions. þþThe bureau said 16.1 million workers belonged to unions at the end of 2008. The number of unionized government workers grew by 275,000 last year and the number of unionized private sector workers grew by slightly more than 150,000.þþSome economists discounted as a statistical fluke the bureau’s report last year that the number of unionized workers had jumped by 311,000 in 2007. Unions have made significant gains in organizing by persuading various governors and state legislatures to allow the unionization of tens of thousands of teachers, home-health aides and home-based child care providers.þþ
Source: NY Times
