New data shows union membership stagnated in the past year
Washington D.C. – Americans for Tax Reform today hailed new statistics showing that union membership in America suffered yet another year of stagnation and decline. This is despite the much-advertised workplace organization campaigns orchestrated by the breakaway “Change to Win” coalition, led by Andrew Stern of the SEIU.
The non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that worker union membership stagnated at 12.5% of all workers in 2005. This is the lowest percentage of union workers on record, dating back to before World War II.
“Most workers know that they don’t need a union to own their own home, own their own health care, own their own retirement, or own their own small business,” said ATR President Grover Norquist. “Unions no longer represent the best interests of their workers. They represent the best interest of union elites, who are too often aligned with the radical left wing of the Democrat party.”
Other data from the report are ominous for unions. The percentage of union members over the age of 45 increased from 41.3% to 41.9% of all union members. The union membership rate among federal government employees fell from 29.9% to 27.8%. Union membership levels fell in bell-weather states such as Florida, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. A majority of union members are in just six states: California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and New Jersey.
“Increasingly, unions are little more than agitators for big government. When the majority of union members come from the beehive cubicles of government bureaucracy, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that higher taxes, more government and more dues-paying bureaucrats are good for increasingly-desperate union bosses,” concluded Norquist.