Recently in Labor Unions Category

Source: John Buntin, Governing, March 2010

Critics say it's time for cities and states to get tough with public-sector unions. They may be right -- for all the wrong reasons.

Source: Victoria Stagg Elliott, American Medical Association, February 22, 2010

Experts say nurses are leading a trend toward more organized labor in the medical setting -- mostly in hospitals

The number of medical personnel covered by some form of collective bargaining agreement or registered as union members is edging up, according to numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is partly because the health care sector now employs many more people than do traditionally unionized industries such as manufacturing. But the trend also marks a backlash against some of the belt-tightening by hospitals in response to the recent economic downturn, experts said. Uncertainty around health system reform is also playing a role.

Source: John Schmitt, Center for Economic and Policy Research, February 2010

From the summary:
This report reviews unionization rates, the size and composition of the unionized workforce, and the wage and benefit advantage for union workers in each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia, using the most recent data available and focusing on the period 2003-2009. Pooling data from the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) over that period yields a sample size large enough to look at the experience of even the smallest states.

Source: Roger Bybee, In These Times, January 26, 2010

The anti-union carpet-bombing is incessant, almost universal in the private sector with management fully exploiting its unilateral access to workers on the job. Further, the anti-union war is now accelerating against public-sector as well, observed sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, former union organizer who has written extensively on labor.

Corporations have been actively trying to influence not just their workers, but their investors and the general public as well, against unions. Michaels Stores, the arts and crafts supply chain, is trying to mobilize its stockholders, portraying worker's right to organize as a threat to the company.

Source: Catherine Rampell, New York Times, Economix Blog, February 1, 2010

We recently noted that, last year, public sector union members had outnumbered private sector union members for the first time in history.

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here's a more detailed break-down of where the country's union workers were employed in 2009:

Source: Teamster, Vol. 107 no.1, January/February 2010
(scroll down)

Their goal was in sight and nothing was going to deter these workers from what was rightfully theirs. They had worked hard for it, and finally, it was their turn. They were going to become a part of labor history-- they were going to become Teamsters. More than 1,700 bus workers with the Baumann transportation companies on Long Island are now the newest members of Local 1205, headquartered in Farmingdale, New York. This is a truly historic election, as only 26 certification election victories have taken place for bargaining units of 1,700 or more employees through the National Labor Relations Board in the past 20 years. This is one of those victories.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Division of Labor Force Statistics, Economic News Release, USDL-10-0069, January 22, 2010

In 2009, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union--was 12.3 percent, essentially unchanged from 12.4 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 771,000 to 15.3 million, largely reflecting the overall drop in employment due to the recession. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

Source: Walter Leutz, Christine E. Bishop, and Lisa Dodson, The Gerontologist, published online Aug. 19, 2009
(subscription required)

From the Commonwealth Fund summary:
This Commonwealth Fund-supported study looks at a partnership that was formed between a New York City nursing home union and 40 nursing homes to help implement "person-centered care" at the facilities. Results showed an improvement in quality of life, with residents gaining more autonomy and privacy and many employees experiencing greater job satisfaction.

Source: Daniel J.B. Mitchell, WorkingUSA, Vol. 12 no. 4, December 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
In an earlier article, I discussed and examined the odd morphing of California's state budget crisis of the early 2000s into a fight between Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with public-sector unions over a series of ballot initiatives. By making an enemy of the labor movement, the governor provoked a massive campaign against his initiatives. Below I describe a different strategy taken by the governor in the context of the California budget crisis of 2008-2009.

Source: Steve Early, WorkingUSA, Vol. 12 no. 4, December 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
The terrain of "progressive labor" in the U.S. has shifted dramatically in recent years. The two million-member Service Employees International Union--long associated with the remaking of labor as a force for social justice--has become embroiled in a series of controversies that have alienated past campus, community, and political allies. A union that once commanded almost automatic support in left-liberal academic circles now finds many "friends of labor" arrayed against it, rhetorically at least, and in some cases, actively assisting organizational rivals such as UNITE HERE and the new National Union of Healthcare Workers. The following article examines the recent history of the labor-intellectual alliance that emerged in the mid-1990s, in response to changes in the national American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) leadership. It assesses the current state of relations between labor-oriented academics and key unions associated with the Change To Win coalition that split from the AFL-CIO in 2005.