Labor union membership falls in U.S. in 2014

[discocrisco01]

Bloomberg reports

The rate of U.S. union membership fell slightly in 2014, continuing a trend that suggests the labor movement will have to step up efforts to rebound from its decades-long slide.

See: Public-sector workers are nearly six times as likely to be union members.

Figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the combined rate of private- and public-sector union membership was 11.1% last year, down from 11.3% the prior year. Membership in the private sector fell to a rate of 6.6% in 2014, from 6.7%, while public-sector representation rose slightly to 35.7%, from 35.3%.

Unions managed to collectively add about 41,000 members in the private sector, led by industries such as construction and leisure and hospitality, but it wasn’t enough to keep pace with total private-sector employment, said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research.

What is the solution to this problem. I think it would be (i) allowing card-check elections, (ii) forcing states to retract right-to-work laws, and (iii) most importantly is convincing American workers that they need to collectively baragin for medium to large-sized business that several workers who belong in a standard job category where job duties are standardized and therefore, the workers should have the ability to collectively bargain for fair wage for that labor category.

Americans seems to have negative feelings about unions by listening to hours and hours of right-wing propaganda. That is a huge problem that needs to change.

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. Until Voters Understand The Value Of Unions And Elect Pro Labor It Will Get Worse.

As long as the general public has a negative view of unions and see them as too communistic it will be hard to reverse what is going on. The GOP has done a good job of making the word "union" a bad word. Pro worker and pro labor policies are labeled as too communistic and anti free market.

If you run a union person for an office or if they come out openly and unabashedly pro union and pro labor regulation they get beat because voters will reject them. And the media is more than happy to suppress information about labor problems. In a corrupt media environment workers really have little voice. And pro labor activists and activities are usually undercut and labeled anarchists or agitators.