Recession Takes Toll On Unions

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

Union membership and density both declined last year for the second straight year, more than erasing the gains of the previous two years. The nation’s unions had 14,715 million members in 2010, or 11.9% of all workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported; union membership was down by 612,000 and density was down 0.4% from the year before. The Great Recession has pushed down union membership by 1.3 million in the last two years combined, BLS data add, double the total gains unions made in 2007-08. Particularly hit hard by the recession were three more-densely unionized sectors: manufacturing, construction and local government. As a result, just 6.9% of private sector workers are unionized, compared to 36.2% of public workers, who are now prime targets of business and conservative politicians. The decline in union membership from 2009 to 2010 was widespread, as even states with high union density, such as New York (24.2%), dropped. The wage difference between unionists and non-unionists hit a key milestone: precisely $200 a week. Unionists had a median wage of $917 per week compared to $717 for non-unionists; the union-non-union gap widened by $2 in one year. And union women still had a significantly higher median wage than their non-union sisters, and were closer to parity with men. In 2010, union women earned a median weekly wage of $856, or 88.5% of the union men’s median of $967. Non-union women had a median wage of $639, or 81% of the $789 median weekly wage for men. - Mark Gruenberg, Press Associates, Inc.; photo by Adam Wright