78,000 New Federal Union Members

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in the federal sector rose by 78,000 workers between 2007 and 2008, a 1.3 percent total increase in the number of federal workers in unions. I know the National Treasury Employees Union says their membership is at a high point in their 70-year history, and I'll be looking into where the gains come from, overall.

This was a good year for union membership overall in the United States; unions gained 428,000 members in the public and private sectors last year. But most of those gains went to the public sector, especially in state and local governments. Some of that imbalance may be due to layoffs in unionized parts of the private sector: it hasn't exactly been an awesome year for auto workers for example. But I do wonder if Bush administration moves to curtail union organizing and unions' power may have backfired and made unions seem like a more appealing prospect for some federal workers.