Union Leaders Say Workers Are Fed Up
According to the DailyPress.com:
Labor leaders say workers are fed up amid stagnant wages, worries about health insurance coverage and jobs lost overseas.
But can middle-class worries about well-being help reverse the decades-long trend of declining union membership?
"Workers of all backgrounds from all (across) the country are choosing to unite in unions — as long as they have the opportunity and the freedom to form unions without interference from their employers," said Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, in an e-mail interview.Of course, SEIU is one of the nation's fastest-growing unions, with more than 1.9 million members. It has scored notable successes in recent years organizing hospital workers, janitors, security guards and other service industry workers.
But while SEIU and other service- and government-employee unions have made gains, the ongoing decline in the number of jobs in the manufacturing sector has served to keep the number of union jobs sliding, said labor expert David Cornfield, a sociology professor at Vanderbilt University.
Union membership stood at 12 percent in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — down from 12.5 percent a year earlier. The rate has declined steadily from 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year for which comparable data is available, the BLS said. And when it comes to union membership, workers in the public sector outnumber private-sector employees 5-to-1...click to continue.
