Public sector unions gain ground in labor movement
Government workers on track to become majority of union members nationwide.
As the influence of traditional blue-collar unions dwindles in the private sector, government unions are taking on a new prominence.
Union membership in the private sector reached a low of 7.8 percent in 2005, while 36.5 percent of government workers, including state and local in addition to federal, were unionized, according to a new report from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. The Washington state anti-union policy group released the report for Labor Day.
"The realization that this is where unions are going is just starting to dawn on people in the last couple of years," said Michael Reitz, one of the report's authors. "It won't be very long before a majority of union members nationwide are in government."
Many of the public sector union members belonged to local organizations, such as teachers' unions. Local governments, according to the report, have 41.9 percent union membership. But Evergreen's focus on increased government prominence in organized labor, and criticisms of it, extended to the federal sphere.
John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said his union -- the largest in the federal government -- gained 15,000 new members in the past couple of years. Gage attributed the increase to a greater emphasis on organizing and to government initiatives to scrap the traditional General Schedule pay and collective bargaining systems, which worry some employees.
Evergreen's report noted the breakup of the AFL-CIO last year as a sign of dwindling private sector labor influence. Gage, whose union is a member of AFL-CIO, said any union's success is a good thing for labor.
"When you're on the AFL, you try and look at all of labor and certainly we've been able to be somewhat of a steady influence in terms of membership anyway," Gage said. "The steelworkers, some of these great unions have really been hit."
Reitz said he is worried by that trend.
"In private industries…self interest of the union negotiating is counterbalanced by competition, by making sure they're recognizing the employers' bottom line," Reitz said. "They don't want to bankrupt the employers or drive them into a different county…The same self interest does not exist in the public sector."
But Gage said his union, which does not bargain over pay or benefits, cares equally about the well-being of employers -- in this case government agencies. Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, agreed.
"The authors of this report seem to think that growth of unions and union membership in the public sector is a detriment to taxpayers, but I disagree," Kelley said. "Unions are a positive force in government."
Some of Evergreen's recommendations are already in place for the federal sector. Most federal unions are not allowed to strike and are required to submit their financial records to the Labor Department. The others were to ban payroll deductions for union dues and to foster greater competition among unions.