Union membership falls to lowest percentage in 76 years

[leftstreet]

Union membership falls to lowest percentage in 76 years

Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:26pm EST

(Reuters) - The percentage of workers belonging to unions tumbled to 11.3 percent in 2012, the lowest percentage in 76 years, led by dramatic declines in states where lawmakers have put organized labor in the political crosshairs, government figures showed on Wednesday.

The total number of union members fell by nearly 400,000, from 11.8 percent of the workforce in 2011, the Labor Department report on union membership said. The rate of 11.3 percent of the workforce was the lowest since 1936, when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

...snip...

Robert Bruno, professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois, said a growing number of laws that make organizing workers more difficult were part of the reason for "an incremental erosion" of the labor movement.

"It goes back a couple of decades, that there has been a growing number of anti-labor policies," Bruno said. "We have the weakest labor law and enforcement of labor law in the entire Western industrialized world," he said.



http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/24/us-usa-unions-membership-idUSBRE90M1MQ20130124

[YoungDemCA]

1. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the working clases of America had a lot more power...

...than they have today. Unions were a big part of that.

The anti-labor policies the article speaks of, the decline in standard of living for working-class Americans, and the subsequent enormous power of the business, professional, and management classes in the US, are very connected.

[nick of time]

2. This is the United States of Corporations

and the PTB can't have the workers organizing to demand better wages/working conditions/bennies.
That might hurt the PTB's grotesque profits. NO NO NO, can't have that.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. How ironic that you are flying the Microserf flag while bemoaning the demise of unions. n/t

[nick of time]

4. I'm only using that because I like the colors.

Don't read anything there that ain't there.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. OK, my bad. It is ironic, however. n/t

[nick of time]

6. Irony is my middle name.

Thanks.
I plan on changing it when I find something different that I really like.
Have a good day, raining here today and supposed to rain for the next 2 days.
Ugggg.

[Egalitarian Thug]

13. You too. We're getting rain as well, but it is kind of nice since we go months

between rain showers here.

[The2ndWheel]

7. So did America as a nation

More people entering the workforce, the world opening up and slowly working under the same system, technology, those are some of the things that have led to a decrease in union strength.

Unions are strongest when place matters. It's a pretty placeless world these days though, and America might be the least defined place.

[Bake]

8. It will likely take a while, but those non-union workers will regret it.

It will take a long time for them to wake up to the fact that the Company doesn't give two shits about them.

Time for another Upton Sinclair ...

Bake

[HiPointDem]

9. once again, floored at how insignificant labor issues are to the democratic party.

[leftstreet]

10. Yep

The party sees two classes: Middle and Rich. And the first one exists through the benevolence of the second

Labor 'issues' are for peons

[HiPointDem]

11. +1

[Brickbat]

12. It'll come around, but not for awhile.

K&R.

[Fumesucker]

14. I have a family member in one of the theatrical unions

He loves the pay and the benefits but hates the working environment, particularly the inside the union politics that determine who gets sent to the best jobs.

Most of the time when they work it's 12 hours a day/7 days a week on tight schedule, they get paid well but the overtime is mandatory and the work is rather physical, it's hard for someone in their late fifties to keep up that kind of pace.