The real percentage to watch, is the private sector percentage of US union membership of only 9%. The public sector is stacked with many municipal 'associations' (cops, etc.) or locals of 'workers' like prison guards, etc.. And even legitimate public sector unions don't always function as true unions. So what can one say about a workforce with 9% in the private sector? Essentially, the US has no functioning labor movement. Period. How can a 9% base of support (and this is not a solid base even) go up against the bosses in the traditional manner? What power is there in threatening to withhold the labor power of the 9%? The sad aspect of the Nader mobilization, is that as only an electoral maneuver, it was a march up a dead end alley. If it had represented a movement to reformulate a new strategy to build a new labor movement in the US, it would have been a step forward. Unfortunately, we are left without even the beginnings of a social movement with any strategy to defend the US working class. This, despite all the hoopla over Seattle, and the other mobilizations by activists. Even the 'fair wage' campaigns seem to now be in a torpor. This will be the major challenge in the months ahead, as the economy begins to be stimulated into a drive to shed workers..... How to constitute some sort of new labor strategy? Tony Abdo ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ U.S. Union Membership Declined To a Record Low 13.5% in 2000 By YOCHI J. DREAZEN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- Jan.19, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Capping off a rough year for the nation's labor movement, the percentage of the total work force belonging to a union plunged to a record low in 2000, as the number of union members also slid. The government reported that union membership fell to 13.5% of the work force last year, the lowest level since data collection began in 1983. The rate had held steady in the two previous years. The labor movement continues to do far better in the public sector, where layoffs are difficult to impose, than in the private sector, which is starting to feel the sting of slower economic growth. The unions' share of private-sector workers fell to a record low of 9% last year from 9.5% the year before while its share of government workers inched up to 37.5% from 37.3%. The total number of union members, meanwhile, slipped to 16.3 million from 16.5 million in 1999. The declines come as labor poured unprecedented amounts of human and financial resources into last year's elections, only to see Republicans win control, for the first time in more than four decades, of the White House as well as both houses of Congress. The decreases also represent an embarrassing setback for AFL-CIO leaders who had trumpeted the 1999 figures as proof they had reversed a decades-long slide in membership and prestige. The number of union members had grown slightly in 1999, but the membership rate remained unchanged. "This suggests that 1999 was a fluke year, and that the leaders of the union movement actually haven't figured out a way to stanch the bleeding," said Gary Chaison, a union expert and professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. AFL-CIO organizing director Mark Splain said he was disappointed. "We recognize that the numbers are not where we want or need them to be," he said, "but we're making some inroads among engineers and other professional workers." The Labor Department data painted a picture of a labor movement struggling to adjust to the rapid changes roiling the economy. Traditional union strongholds, such as manufacturing and transportation, have been shedding jobs for years, and organized labor has had relatively little success securing footholds among high-tech or temporary workers, two of the fastest-growing sectors of the labor force. Both trends have been exacerbated by the slowing economy, which has hammered areas where unions are strongest. The manufacturing sector, for instance, shed 194,000 jobs in 2000, while the apparel-making and auto sectors cut 45,000 positions each. Those cutbacks added to the long slide in union membership rates. In 1983, unions represented 20.1% of the nation's workers. By 1998, they had reached the previous record low of 13.9%. The membership rate held steady in 1999 after unions organized hundreds of thousands of health- care and service workers in California and Puerto Rico. Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. _______________________________________________ Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
