>A bad year for big labor
Last Updated: 10:41 PM, September 4, 2011
Posted: 9:46 PM, September 4, 2011
Today America observes Labor Day, as it has every year since 1894.
The holiday was ostensibly meant to pay a tribute to the “strength and esprit de corps of trade and labor organizations” — but the subtext has always been about unions flexing their political muscle.
Atrophied muscle, to be sure — even in New York City, long a “union town,” membership has been in steady decline — but muscle nonetheless.
Such vitality as does persist in the movement resides in public-sector unions — whose relatively generous wages and benefits are funded by tax dollars.
In New York, for example, there is an astounding 57 percentage-point gap between private- and public-sector unionization rates, according to a new report by CUNY researchers. While fewer than 14 percent of private-sector workers in the city are unionized — itself twice the national rate — fully 71 percent of public employees in the city and state are union members.
Still, even the powerful public-sector unions like AFSCME and the various state and national teachers unions are finding their members hard to keep in line.
Consider that membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees has declined 70 percent since 2001, when that state required public-sector unions to have annual votes reauthorizing dues collection.
