Federal, state, local. Add ‘em all up and you discover that a majority of union members now work for the government. At least that’s what a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.
Of course, since the report comes from the BSA, it was probably produced by union members, so who knows how accurate it may be.
Heritage.org lays out the depressing facts:
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that a majority of American union members now work for the government. The pattern of unions adding members in government while losing members in the private sector accelerated during the recession. The typical union member now works in the Post Office, not on the assembly line.
… The BLS’s annual report on union membership shows the labor movement’s decline in membership continued in 2009. While a full 23.0 percent of Americans belonged to labor unions in 1980, by 2008 only 12.4 percent did. In 2009, that figure dropped slightly to 12.3 percent.[2] There are now 15.3 million union members in the United States, 770,000 fewer than in 2008.
… What is newsworthy, however, is another figure reported by the BLS: 52 percent of all union members work for the federal or state and local governments, a sharp increase from the 49 percent in 2008. A majority of American union members are now employed by the government; three times more union members now work in the Post Office than in the auto industry.
That’s really only half the story, though.
IHateTheMedia.com’s editor’s next door neighbor owns an engineering company that builds bridges. He’s a liberal who said his company wouldn’t be allowed to bid on government jobs (100% of his business, since there aren’t a lot of private bridges being built) if his workforce wasn’t unionized.
So it may be true that 52% of all union workers work for government, but that understates a significant number of private sector union members whose jobs are dependent on and mandated by the government.
Any questions as to why the unions support big government liberals?
Source: Heritage.org
