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2/1/11
10:14 AM
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Despite fall in union membership
Pacific Northwest ranks among top 10 in union density
48
10
46
5
44
0
42
Middle Class Share
15
2002
50
2007
20
1997
52
1992
25
1987
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54
1982
Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Family
and Medical Leave Act and — most re-
cently — the Affordable Care Act.
And unions ensure that workers are
paid fair wages. Unionized workers to-
day make significantly more than their
nonunion counterparts — about $2.50
more per hour than an otherwise com-
parable worker in the typical state, ac-
30
1977
By KARLA WALTER
& DAVID MADLAND
Union membership is at record lows.
Critics claim that unions are not impor-
tant to the modern economy — with
only 12 percent of workers currently
unionized — but the truth is that if you
care about the middle class, you need to
care about unions.
The middle class is markedly
stronger when workers join together in
unions. As the chart at right demon-
strates, the sharp decline over the past
40 years in the percentage of workers
organized in unions has been associated
with an equally sharp drop in the share
of the nation’s income going to the mid-
dle class — those in the second, third
and forth income quintiles.
The power of unions to create pros-
perity for working families is well rec-
ognized: Organized labor is one of the
few voices for the economic interests of
the middle class in our government.
Unions were key to creating and pro-
tecting the social safety net (including
Social Security and Medicare) and win-
ning major legislative victories for
working families such as the Equal Pay
As union membership decreases, middle class income shrinks
1972
As union membership falls,
middle class incomes shrink
health care and hospitality, were not as
hard hit by the recession. As a result,
6.9 percent of private sector workers
are unionized, compared to 36.2 per-
cent of public workers. Public sector
unionists outnumber private sector
unionists by 500,000.
Some private sector industries are
more unionized than others, however:
transportation and utilities (21.8 per-
cent), telecommunications (15.8 per-
cent), and construction (13.1 percent).
Since 1983, when BLS first started
keeping comparable data, union den-
sity among men has declined by 12.1
percent, to 12.6 percent in 2010. The
rate for women has dropped 3.5 percent
in 27 years, and 0.2 percent from 2009
union members dropped 22,000.
Those numbers mirrored a national
trend of lower union density in nearly
every state in the country.
BLS union data analyst Jim Walker
told Press Associates Union News
Service the recession particularly hit
hard at three more-densely unionized
sectors: manufacturing, construction
and local government.
“Also, men dominate those indus-
tries — especially manufacturing and
construction — and they have a higher
share of union membership and were
particularly hard hit by the downturn,”
he said.
By contrast, Walker said more
lightly unionized sectors, including
1967
ers. Only New York (24.2 percent),
Alaska (22.9 percent) and Hawaii (21.8
percent) have higher unionization rates
than Washington.
Oregon’s 245,000 union members
puts it 10th nationally in union density
— at 16.2 percent.
States ahead of Oregon in union
density are California (17.5 percent),
New Jersey (17.1 percent), Connecti-
cut (16.7 percent), Michigan (16.5 per-
cent), and Rhode Island (16.4 percent).
According to BLS statistics, total
jobs in Oregon increased by 44,000 in
2010, while union membership fell by
5,000.
Total jobs in Washington dropped
10,000 in 2010, but the number of
Union Membership Rate
The Great Recession has pushed
down union membership by 1.3 million
over the last two years — nearly double
the total gains unions made in 2007-08,
according to the latest report from the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS).
The number of union members
dropped 612,000 to 14.7 million in
2010. The rate of union membership
dropped to 11.9 percent, compared to
12.3 percent the previous year.
In the state-by-state breakdown,
Washington held its No. 4 ranking in
terms of union density, with the state’s
552,000 union members accounting for
19.4 percent of the overall workforce
— nearly one in five Washington work-
Union Membership
Rate
Middle Class Share
of National Income
to 2010. It’s now 11.1 percent. Men
were also a larger share of unionists in
2010 (54 percent) and in 2009 (55 per-
cent) than their share of the total work-
force (51 percent).
There were some states where union
membership increased, with all of them
in the South or West. But even there,
the recession’s impact appeared.
For instance, BLS reported that
North Carolina is still last in union den-
sity, though it edged up from 3.1 per-
cent and 115,000 unionists in 2009 to
3.2 percent and 117,000 last year.
The biggest percentage gain was in
Kentucky, which added 3,000 union-
ists, to 100,000, and density rose from
13.9 percent to 14.8 percent.
The wage difference between union
and nonunion workers hit a key mile-
stone: Precisely $200 a week. Union-
ized workers had a median wage of
$917 per week compared to $717 for
nonunion workers. The median is the
point where half the population is
above and half is below the figure. The
union/nonunion gap widened by $2 in
one year.
And union women still had a sig-
nificantly higher median wage than
their nonunion sisters — and were
closer to parity with men. In 2010,
union women earned a median weekly
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