I'm sure AS can set us straight if we got that one wrong.
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!
Uh huh. :-)
I'm sure that the AFL-CIO endorsed Carter in the 1976 general election, but I don't know who they favored in the primaries back then.
If the Dem Party put up Pol Pot, the AFL-CIO would endorse him.
The AFL-CIO endorsement in that context is hardly a significant positive.
Shhhhh! You're going to disillusion AS!
Only 13.5 percent of all Americans are union members
Lowest in 52 years.
manufacturingnews.com
In 2002, 13.2 percent of wage and salary workers were union members, down
from 13.4 percent (as revised) in 2001, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau
of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of persons belonging to a
union fell by 280,000 over the year to 16.1 million in 2002. The union mem-
bership rate has steadily declined from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983, the
first year for which comparable union data are available. Some highlights
from the 2002 data are:
--Men were more likely to be union members than women.
--The union membership rate for blacks was unchanged and remained higher
than the rates for either whites or Hispanics.
--Nearly 4 in 10 government workers were union members in 2002, compared
with less than 1 in 10 workers in private-sector industries. The trans-
portation industry had the highest private-sector rate of unionization.
--Nearly two-fifths of workers in protective service occupations were
union members in 2002. Protective service occupations include fire-
fighters and police officers. This group has had the highest union
membership rate of any broad occupation group in every year since 1983.
Membership by Industry and Occupation
In 2002, workers in the public sector had a union membership rate over
four times that of private-sector employees, 37.5 percent compared with
8.5 percent. < The unionization rate for government workers has held steady
since 1983. The rate for private industry workers has fallen by nearly
half over the same time period. Within government, local government
workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.8 percent. This group
includes the heavily unionized occupations of teachers, police officers,
and firefighters. Among private industries, transportation had the high-
est union membership rate, at 23.8 percent. Construction and durable goods
manufacturing also had higher-than-average rates, at 17.2 percent and
15.6 percent, respectively. The industry with the lowest unionization rate
in 2002 was finance, insurance, and real estate--1.9 percent. (See table 3.)
Among occupational groups, protective service workers continued to have
the highest unionization rate in 2002, at 37.0 percent. Precision produc-
tion, craft, and repair workers and operators, fabricators, and laborers also
had higher-than-average union membership rates at 20.7 percent and 19.1 per-
cent, respectively. Workers in these occupations typically are employed in
the highly unionized industries of manufacturing and construction. Profes-
sional specialty workers, a group that includes teachers, also had a higher-
than-average union membership rate in 2002, at 19.2 percent. Sales occupa-
tions had the lowest unionization rate--3.6 percent. (See table 3.)
Demographic Characteristics of Union Members
In 2002, union membership rates were higher for men (14.7 percent) than
for women (11.6 percent). The union membership rate for men fell from
15.0 percent in 2001, while the rate for women was unchanged. The gap be-
tween men's and women's rates has narrowed considerably since 1983, when
the rate for men was 10 percentage points higher than the rate for women.
Blacks were more likely to be union members (16.9 percent) than either
whites (12.8 percent) or Hispanics (10.5 percent). Black men had the highest
unionization rate (18.2 percent) among the major demographic groups, and
Hispanic women and white women had the lowest rates, 9.8 percent and 10.9 per-
cent, respectively. Union membership rates were highest among workers be-
tween the ages of 45 to 54 years. Full-time workers were more than twice
as likely as part-time workers to be union members. (See table 1.)
Union Representation of Nonmembers
About 1.7 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union
on their main job in 2002, while not being union members themselves. (See
table 1.) Over half of these workers were employed in government and about
20 percent worked in the services industry. (See table 3.)
Earnings
In 2002, full-time wage and salary workers who were union members had
median usual weekly earnings of $740, compared with a median of $587 for
wage and salary workers who were not represented by unions. (See table 2.)
The difference reflects a variety of influences in addition to coverage by
a collective bargaining agreement, including variations in the distributions
of union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, firm size,
or geographic region. (For a discussion of the problem of differentiating
between the influence of unionization status and the influence of other worker
characteristics on employee earnings, see "Measuring union-nonunion earnings
differences," Monthly Labor Review, June 1990.)
Union Membership by State
Union membership rates in many states also declined slightly in 2002,
with 33 states and the District of Columbia reporting lower membership
rates and 15 states registering increases. Two states reported no change
in their union membership rates from 2001 to 2002. Twenty-eight states had
union membership rates below that of the U.S., while 21 states and the
District of Columbia had higher rates. Once again, all states in the East
North Central, Middle Atlantic, and Pacific divisions had union membership
rates above the national average of 13.2 percent, while all states in the
East South Central and West South Central divisions had rates below it.
(See table 5.)
Four states had union membership rates over 20.0 percent in 2002--New
York (25.3 percent), Hawaii (24.4 percent), Alaska (24.3 percent), and
Michigan (21.1 percent). This is the same rank order as in 2001. All
four states have had rates above 20.0 percent every year since data became
regularly available in 1995. North Carolina and South Carolina also con-
tinued to report the lowest union membership rates, 3.2 percent and
4.9 percent, respectively. These two states have had the lowest union
membership rates each year since the state series became available.
The largest numbers of union members lived in California (2.5 million),
New York (2.0 million), and Illinois (1.1 million). Over half (8.1 million)
of the 16.1 million union members in the U.S. lived in six states, although
these states accounted for only 35 percent of wage and salary employment
nationally.
The number of union members in a state depends on both its population
size and union membership rate. Texas (the second most populous state) had
less than one-fourth as many union members as New York (the third largest),
despite having nearly 1.0 million more wage and salary employees. Similarly,
Florida (the fourth largest state) and Indiana (the fourteenth) had virtually
the same number of union members, even though Florida's wage and salary em-
ployment level was more than double that of Indiana.
bls.gov |
