Good News And Numbers For Unions

These are exciting times now for unions in America. For decades, corporations have chipped away at their power and their ability to organize, resulting in a precipitous decline in membership. Despite that corporate dominance over workers, the total amount of Americans in unions rose in the highest amount since 1983. It sounds great, but only because many of the new recruits work in government where union busting is not much of a problem. Now imagine if private companies had to let workers have their say about joining a union in the same way the government does. Well it can be a reality soon, as long as Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act.

From The NY Times:

Most 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.

According 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.

The 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.

It is true that many of those losses in membership are due to declining manufacturing jobs. Yet plenty of other industry sectors have blossomed but have not seen much in the way of unionizing. Passing the EFCA would be instrumental in helping to make that happen. Finally we could start to shift the balance of power back towards the people in this country that actually produce the goods and services that the corporations exist off of. After this battle is won, an increase of 428,000 union members a year will seem miniscule.