Losing labor

The latest numbers are in from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they paint a grim picture for organized labor in the United States:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that union membership fell by 326,000 in 2006, to 15.4 million workers, bringing the percentage of employees in unions to 12 percent, down from 12.5 percent in 2005. Those figures are down from 20 percent in 1983 and from 35 percent in the 1950s.

Work force experts said the decline in union membership was caused by large-scale layoffs and buyouts in the auto industry and other manufacturing industries, together with the labor movement's difficulties in organizing nonunion workers fast enough to offset those losses.

As usual, the South comes out at the bottom. Of the 10 states with the lowest union membership, 9 are in the South, with the Carolinas following their familiar pattern of jockeying for the bottom spot (this year they tie for last with only 3.3% of workers in unions).

Changes in the economy -- especially the pounding suffered by heavy manufacturing -- are definitely a big factor. But in a press conference, Stewart Acuff -- Organizing Director for the AFL-CIO and a Georgia native -- notes that employer hostility plays a role, too:

The AFL-CIO pointed to polling results showing that 53 percent of nonunion workers said they would vote to join a union tomorrow if they could.

"Sixty million Americans say they would join a union tomorrow if they could — that's far more than the 15.4 million now in unions,” said Stewart Acuff, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s organizing director. "What's stopping them is employer resistance."

This disconnect between what workers want, and what they end up getting, points to the need for the Employee Free Choice Act, which Rep. George Miller (D-CA) described this way when he introduced it last spring:

Along with antiunion firings and discrimination, union-busters use other outrageous tactics to undermine their employees' freedom to unionize. One North Carolina pork-producing company paid employees to spy on co-workers suspected of organizing. Cintas, a uniform-rental and laundry company, had its supervisors follow employees into restrooms to make sure they weren't talking about unions. Wal-Mart, of course, maintains an antiunion SWAT team that bursts into action as soon as it suspects organizing activity.

We don't need employers waging class war in the workplace. That's why I've introduced the Employee Free Choice Act (HR 1696), which has the bipartisan backing of 207 Representatives and forty-one Senators. The bill strengthens organizing rights in three key ways. To begin with, if a majority of employees sign union cards, they get a union. Second, either party in an opening contract negotiation can request mediation or binding arbitration within a reasonable time period. (This is important because often--in about one-third of cases--workers win union representation but remain without a contract after a year of bargaining.) Finally, the act would stiffen penalties for labor-law violations.

UPDATE:The New York Times updated their graph, featured above, which as several readers noted included outdated BLS data in its earlier version.