Washington – Union membership dropped to 12 percent of U.S. workers last year, extending a steady decline from the 1950s, when more than a third belonged to unions.
After membership had held steady at 12.5 percent in 2005, it declined anew last year, a decrease of more than 325,000 workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Thursday.
Membership had been 20.1 percent in 1983, when the bureau first provided comparable numbers. About 35 percent of American workers were union members in the mid-1950s.
The latest gloomy news for organized labor comes at a time when the group is pushing legislation in the Democrat-controlled Congress that would make it easier for unions to organize.
But labor laws aren’t the only obstacle to union membership. “Much of the decline is coming from shifts in the economy,” said Greg Denier of Change to Win, a federation of labor unions. Thousands of jobs are being outsourced or lost to technological changes. And employers are aggressively campaigning against unions, he said.
