In reference to the 2007 uptick in union membership that we noted on January 26th, there's a good editorial in the New York Times this morning:
The Labor Department reported that the number of workers belonging to a union grew by 311,000 to 15.7 million. That means union members increased from 12 percent of the American work force in 2006 to 12.1 percent last year. In the private sector, unions’ share of workers inched ahead from 7.4 percent to 7.46 percent. While the rebound is tiny, and might yet prove to be a statistical mirage, it is the first recorded increase in organized labor’s ranks since the 1970s, when almost one in four workers belonged to a union.
There is little doubt that American workers need unions. Wages today are almost 10 percent lower than they were in 1973, after accounting for inflation. The share of national income devoted to workers’ wages and benefits is at its lowest since the late-1960s, while the share going to profits has surged. The decline in unionization has been a big part of the reason that workers have lost so much ground...
[T]he uptick offers hope that the renewed emphasis on organizing workers by some of the nation’s largest unions — like the service employees’ union, the Teamsters and others that split off from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to form the Change to Win coalition — might start paying dividends despite the difficult odds.
