As Trump takes aim, union membership has declined

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Labor unions have been among the most vocal critics of Donald Trump and his expanding team of economic advisers, sounding warnings over the president-elect's positions on a range of issues and promising to stymie his policy agenda when warranted.

Alas, federal data indicate the influence of labor unions — at least when it comes to membership — is waning. A recent analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that union membership as a percentage of the entire labor force declined in 24 states in 2015, while some 34 states and the District of Columbia were down from where they were a decade earlier.

States with some of the largest declines were concentrated in the U.S. Rust Belt. Wisconsin's union membership as a percentage of its total labor force dropped 7.8 percentage points — from 16.1 percent in 2005 to 8.3 percent in 2015 — following a bitter policy battle that saw Gov. Scott Walker beat back rules around labor organizing and membership dues. Similar efforts in Indiana resulted in a 2.4 percentage-point slide, while Ohio (down 3.7 percentage points) and Michigan (5.3 percentage points) also ranked among the largest decliners.

In Washington, 16.8 percent of the state’s total workforce was unionized in 2015. The ratio was unchanged from 2014. But since 2005, union membership as a percentage of overall workers in Washington declined by 2.3 percentage points from 19.1 percent of the state’s workforce.

New York, the state with the largest ratio of union members (24.7 percent) as a percentage of its total workforce, reported a 1.4 percentage point decline over the same decade. At 2.1 percent, South Carolina's ratio of union membership ranked as the country's lowest, having dropped by 0.2 percentage points between 2005 and 2015.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2016/12/12/trump-attacks-union-membership-decline-washington.html?ana=e_me_set1&s=newsletter&ed=2016-12-12&u=ColXVN5SPzQtLHFP87ho2w07857290&t=1481568430&j=76732961

[still_one]

1. The blatant attack on labor started formally with Reagan, and has been going on ever since

[CrispyQ]

2. If you were born after 1980, all you've ever heard is that unions are bad.

If you weren't taught civics in grade school, then you never learned how many things that the labor movement fought for that we take for granted today - vacation time, overtime, safe working conditions, benefits. Management didn't give those things out of the kindness of their hearts, & they've been working hard with the GOP to take them back.