Vol. 73/No. 6      February 16, 2009

According to the report, the number of union members increased by 428,000 last year, the biggest annual gain since the government began keeping records in 1983.

Union membership peaked at 35 percent of the workforce in the 1950s and declined to 20 percent by 1983, due to the class-collaborationist course of the union officialdoms, which subordinates the use of union power to the election of capitalist politicians. In one sign of the continued weakening of trade unions, that membership decline continued until 2006 when it reached a low of 12 percent.

The modest increases over the last two years are an indication that some workers are looking to the unions for protection in face of the deepening worldwide economic crisis.

Some 12.4 percent of workers were union members in 2008, up from 12.1 percent in 2007 according to the government report. Union membership rates rose in 26 states and the District of Columbia, declined in 20, and were unchanged in 4.

Most of the increase came from government workers, whose union membership rate rose from 35.9 percent in 2007 to 36.8 percent in 2008.

While the percentage of union construction workers rose from 13.9 percent in 2007 to 15.6 percent in 2008, and among manufacturing workers stayed at a little more than 11 percent, the number of union miners declined sharply from 9.3 to 6.9 percent in that same period.

A higher percentage of workers who are Black—14.5 percent—are union members compared to 12.2 for white workers and 10.6 for Asian and Latino workers.

The government report notes that while union membership for men, 13.4 percent, is higher than for women, 11.4 percent, “the gap between their rates has narrowed considerably since 1983, when the rate for men was about 10 percentage points higher than the rate for women.” That gap narrowed as union membership for men declined by 11.3 percent from 1983 to 2008, while for women it declined 3.2 percent.

The states with the highest percentage of union membership are New York, Hawaii, and Alaska. The lowest are North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina.
 
 
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