INSTITUTE INDEX: A new day for labor?

Date of the first Labor Day celebration in the United States: 9/5/1882

Number of days after the end of the 1894 Pullman railcar company strike that President Grover Cleveland signed into law a bill making Labor Day a national holiday: 6

Number of federal troops Cleveland deployed to break that strike, which he declared a federal crime at the urging of railroad executives: 12,000

Percent that company owner George Pullman cut his workers' wages during the winter before the strike: 30

Number of workers involved in the Pullman strike: about 250,000

Number of people killed in that strike after soldiers began firing on protesters: 34

Percentage of U.S. labor force that belonged to unions in 1890: 1.4

In 1900: 2.7

In 1930: 7.4

In 1940: 15.9

In 1970: 27.8

In 2000: 13.6

In 2008: 12.4

Number of members U.S. unions added in 2008, the largest gain in a quarter-century: 428,000

The U.S. rate of union membership in 2009: 12.3 percent

Number of members lost by U.S. unions from 2008 to 2009, largely reflecting the overall drop in employment due to the recession: 771,000

Total number of U.S. workers in unions in 2009: 15.3 million

Union membership rate among black workers in the U.S.: 13.9 percent

Among white workers: 12.1 percent

Among Asian workers: 11.4 percent

Among Hispanic workers: 10.2 percent

Of the six states with union membership rates below 5 percent in 2009*, percent in the South: 100

Union membership rate in North Carolina, the state with the lowest rate: 3.1 percent

Union membership rate in New York, the state with the highest rate: 25.2 percent

Amount by which the median usual weekly earnings of a union member exceeds those of a non-union member: $198

Amount the AFL-CIO is planning to spend to promote a message of "economic patriotism" leading up to the November elections: $50 million

Date on which U.S. labor unions and allied groups will march on Washington to call for building a more united country with good jobs, equal justice and quality public education for all: 10/2/2010

* North Carolina, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Mississippi

(Click on the link to go to the source. Photo of AFSCME Local 1733 sanitation workers on strike in Memphis, Tenn. in 1968 with the National Guard looking on is from the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.)