Union Membership Sees Slight Boost In 2011 After Years Of Decline

WASHINGTON -- Union membership grew slightly last year, giving labor leaders hope that a period of steep declines has finally bottomed out.

The number of unionized workers increased by about 50,000 to nearly 14.8 million members in 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. The increase comes after unions lost nearly 1.4 million members over the previous two years.

Still, unions' share of the overall workforce fell, from 11.9 percent to 11.8 percent, as state and local governments trimmed thousands of jobs to address budget shortfalls. That's the lowest percentage of union workers since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Unions saw losses of about 61,000 workers in government employment. But they grew by 110,000 workers in the private sector, mainly in construction and health care. Despite that growth, unions still represent just 6.9 percent of all workers at private companies, unchanged from 2010.

"The devastating losses from 2009 and 2010 have stopped and that's got to be good news for the labor movement," said John Schmitt, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

Schmitt said another positive for unions is that private sector membership grew at about the same rate as overall job growth.

Membership Dues

Nauru is a destitute Pacific island with a population of just over nine thousand. The country’s failed economic strategies have included offshore-banking schemes and providing Australia with refugee-detention services. For a time, the national airline had no plane—it had been repossessed. Nauru is also, however, one of the hundred and ninety-three member states in good standing at the United Nations. The underpublicized countries of Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu are also in. Kosovo and Taiwan are not. South Sudan was the most recent to be welcomed, in July. South Ossetia remains on the outside. As on a night-club rope line, if you have to ask what it takes to get into the U.N., you may not be suitable for admittance.

Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, has provoked the latest turmoil in Middle Eastern diplomacy by suggesting that the U.N. should recognize Palestine as a state, even though it is clear that no such nation can be self-sustaining without a negotiated peace with Israel. Abbas has not yet pursued the fullest membership rights, but he has implied that an elevated observer status is in order, whereby Palestine would be sanctified as a formal country.