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.
Compensation in Public, Private Sector Way Behind Productivity
Opponents of working families and their unions have tried to pit public workers against those in the private sector, by fomenting an internal class warfare centered on disparate wages and benefits.
One of their real goals is to hide the uniting factor of both groups: Compensation has stagnated for ALL working people even as they produce more.
In fact, both public-sector and private-sector compensation has seen comparably modest growth: up 20.5 percent in the state/local sector, up 17.9 percent in the private sector, according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). In contrast, hourly productivity grew 62.5 percent between 1989 and 2010—more than three times as fast as compensation grew in either the public or the private sector.
Working people have more in common with each other, whether they work in the public sector or private, than they do with the wealthy elite. But it’s in the interest of corporate CEOs and their lawmaker puppets like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich to sow seeds of resentment and deflect the real issue: The haves are getting rich and fat at an enormous rate, at the expense of the rest of us.
Forbes’ 2011 Billionaires List released yesterday breaks two records: total number of listees (1,210) and combined wealth ($4.5 trillion). As Forbes writes:
This horde surpasses the gross domestic product of Germany….
