In 1983, union workers were over 20% of the U.S workforce.
Today they are 10% of the workforce.
Almost 40% of unionized workers, work for governments. Thus we have
- 90% of workers are not unionized.
- 6% of workers are private sector workers, who belong to a union
- 4% of workers are government employees who belong to a union.
Are unions, good, bad, relevant, not relevant today?
I and my wife both belonged to professional unions for a period in the 2000s, as it was required to be employed in our respective jobs. Both unions were ineffective. Mine sent us an email every week telling us the administration was evil and the union was wonderful and protecting us – except, the union was powerless, never accomplished anything and nothing ever changed. At “best”, that union fought to keep incompetent employees on the payroll – employees whose work output was so substandard that it hurt morale and overall program success – but they could not be fired.
When my wife’s employer increased the patient to medical staff ratio, the union said it could do nothing. This was typical – her union never accomplished anything, yet both of our unions drew funds from our paychecks.
What we saw was the union spent a lot of energy claiming everything was awful and the union was going to fix everything. But these two unions accomplished nothing – except provided support to workers that were incompetent – displeasing the workers who wanted to get things done. Quite a mess.
Thus, our experience with unions was not positive. This could be why not so many workers belong to unions today. The unions’ alternative explanation is that BigCo companies are engaged in union busting activities.
Yet here we are, with the unionized workforce shrinking, becoming a mostly government worker phenomena.
Media: Most American workers want a union—and it may be the only way to save the middle class (aol.com). Claims 59% of workers “support unions in their own workplace”. I doubt 59% of workers support joining a union once given a full information; that’s the problem with doing random polls on random topics, asking people about something they may not know much about.
