Overall Union Membership Notches Up from 2010 to 2011
Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16- to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of 61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members.
Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.
Bottom line, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
Despite an unprecedented volley of partisan political attacks on workers’ rights and the continuing insecurity of our economic crisis, union membership increased slightly last year. Working men and women want to come together and to improve their lives.
Twin Cities Nurses Vote to Strike
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Workday Minnesota editor Barb Kucera reports on the strike vote by 12,000 Twin City nurses.
Amid chants of “Safe Patient Care,” members of the Minnesota Nurses Association announced they have authorized a strike of Twin Cities hospitals—the largest nursing walkout in U.S. history.
More than 12,000 registered nurses are ready to walk off the job in a one-day strike if a new agreement with six Twin Cities hospital systems can’t be reached before June 1, when the current contract expires, the union said. Nurses had been in talks with 14 Twin Cities hospitals for months, but the union says the hospitals are using the weak economy as an excuse to make cuts that would ultimately hurt patients.
The walkout would affect 14 hospitals in the North Memorial, HealthEast, Allina, Methodist, Children’s and Fairview systems.
Of the 9,000-plus Twin Cities RNs who voted Wednesday, more than 90 percent rejected the labor contracts and pension proposals from the hospitals, the union said. Read the rest of this entry »
