|
1) The End of the Decade of the
Public Sector. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
issued its
annual dose of bad news on union membership. While 2010 was a bad year
for everyone, it was a particularly bad year for unions.
There were 612,000 fewer union members
in 2010 than there were in 2009 (which itself had a 770,000 member decline
from 2008). To put that into some perspective, the entire economy lost only
417,000 jobs in 2010. Union market share of the total workforce fell below
12 percent, while its share of the private workforce fell below 7 percent.
Public sector unions lost members across
the board. They are down 273,000 members though federal, state and local
governments only lost 100,000 jobs. These figures and associated news
stories about public pension costs have prompted many on the left (including
The Progressive,
Mother Jones and
Counterpunch) to declare it a "war on public sector workers."
As much as I want to avoid mimicking
such vitriolic language, the current situation isn't as much a "war" as it
is an insurrection after years of occupation. You have to engage in
selective historical amnesia to paint public sector unions as victims.
In 2000, America employed about the same
number of people in the private sector as it does now (102.8 million vs. 103
million). But during the last decade, most of which featured a Republican
U.S. President and several years of GOP control of Congress, the number of
public sector workers increased by 1.8 million.
In the 2000s, private sector unions lost
more than 2.1 million members, while public sector unions added
508,000 members.
In other words, during a decade in which
the private sector workforce increased a paltry 0.2 percent, the public
sector workforce increased 9.2 percent. While private sector union
membership declined 23.1 percent, public sector union membership rose 7.1
percent.
America has become an almost entirely
non-union economy governed by a highly unionized political bureaucracy -
essentially the opposite of the situation in the Fifties. Economic changes
reduced the clout of the private sector unions. Only political changes can
reduce the clout of the public sector unions.
2) Last Week's Intercepts.
EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from January 19-24:
* Wisconsin
Union Concocts Phony News Story. Fake but accurate in the name of
vigilance.
*
Vermont NEA Cancels 159-Year-Old Convention. Union professional
development is also losing market share.
*
New State Rankings on the Only Measurement That Matters Anymore. You
will literally be fired.
*
National Strike? Don’t Hold Your Breath. Wishful thinking.
3) Quote of the Week #1.
"The flip side is that, when I was a union president, I knew
that battles over tenure were great for business. That's because teacher
unions are in the business of selling protection, and anything that causes
teachers to experience more job-related fear or insecurity increases union
membership. I could never say so publicly, but the elimination of tenure
would mean the union contract would be the only protection teachers had.
That amounts to a full employment act for unions.
"...[Florida Education Association] could spend money organizing virtual,
charter and private school teachers into industrial-style bargaining units,
but these units would in most cases be too small to generate an acceptable
return on investment. Therefore FEA sees spending money to prevent teachers
and parents from creating learning options outside the control of school
boards and teachers unions as the smarter business move." - Doug Tuthill,
former president of the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association. (December
27
redefinED)
Quote of the Week #2. "Detroit is not Florida, and DFT is not a George
Bush union." - Detroit Federation of Teachers presidential candidate Steve
Conn, after his election loss. (January 20
Detroit News)
Quote of the Week #3. "No one is as back-stabbing and back-biting as
trade union people, which breaks my heart." - Tom Kelly, consultant to Jack
Ahern, president of the New York City Central Labor Council. (January 19
New York Times) |
