ELOI, ELOI -- LABOR DAY 2011

[Digital_Angel_316]

The fallacy of post-industrial prosperity
By Harold Meyerson, Published: September 4

Of all the lies that the American people have been told the past four decades, the biggest
one may be this: We’ll all come out ahead in the shift from an industrial to a
post-industrial society. Yes, we were counseled, there will be major dislocations, as there
were during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, but the America
that will emerge from this transformation, like the America that emerged 100 years ago,
will be one whose citizens are ultimately more prosperous and secure than their
industrial-era forebears.

What a crock.

On Labor Day 2011, the America that’s replaced the vibrant industrial giant of the
mid-20th century is a basket case. We’ve lost the jobs that created the broadly shared
prosperity that made us the envy of the world. In their place, when we’ve created jobs at
all, they’ve generated neither prosperity nor security.

The most prescient writer on post-industrial America offered a sobering perspective. In
his 1972 book “The Coming of Post-Industrial Society,” sociologist Daniel Bell predicted a
future of service jobs, rising consumption, compensatory entitlements and wars over
taxes.

Even as Bell’s prophecies began to be borne out, though, the champions of the new
economic order — from General Electric’s Jack Welch to every New Democrat and any old
Republican — assured us that America would flourish as a post-industrial innovator in the
new global economy, crafting the cutting-edge technologies whose actual assembly we
could relegate to less-skilled workforces on distant shores. Thirty years ago, when
defenders of American manufacturing first suggested that the nation commit to a
“domestic content” standard in the goods we bought, they were howled down by nearly
every economist and editorial writer in the land. (A friend counted 98 newspapers that
editorialized against it, and none that wrote in favor.)

Today, the economy that arose on manufacturing’s ashes has turned to ashes itself. The
Wall Street-Wal-Mart economy of the past several decades off-shored millions of factory
jobs, which it offset by creating low-paying jobs in the service and retail sectors;
extending credit to consumers so they could keep consuming despite their stagnating
incomes; and fueling, until it collapsed, a boom in construction.

We are only now beginning to understand the toll this economy has taken on America’s
workers — and on our working men in particular. A stunning study from Michael
Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project, published in the Milken Institute
Review, reveals that the median earnings of men ages 25 to 64 declined 28 percent
between 1969 and 2009. Within this age group, the median earnings of men who
completed high school but didn’t go on to college fell 47 percent, while the median
earnings of male college graduates also declined, if only 12 percent.

Part of this decline stems from the shrinking share of working-age men with full-time
jobs, which fell from 83 to 66 percent between 1960 and 2009. The other part stems from
the fall in inflation-adjusted median yearly earnings of working-age men who have
full-time jobs, which have shrunk by about $5,000 since the mid-’70s. Combined, write
Greenstone and Looney, these two declines explain why the earnings of American men
“haven’t been this low since Ike was president and Marshal Dillon was keeping the peace
in Dodge City.”

Anyone seeking to understand the pessimism, frustration and rage of working-class men
needs to begin here, with Greenstone and Looney’s two-by-four-to-the-head tale of
decline. White working-class men in particular have become a disproportionately
receptive audience for those who scapegoat immigrants and minorities for the damage
that has actually been caused by economic and political elites blissfully blind to the
devastation ushered in by their vaunted new economy.

Since that new economy blew up three years ago, many of those elites have been
disabused of the financial fantasies that ordinary Americans long ago ceased to entertain.
The fact that Greenstone and Looney’s study emerged from the Hamilton Project — a
pillar of new-economy thinking, founded by Clinton Treasury secretary Robert Rubin — is
evidence of a paradigm shift in economic vision. From centrist Democratic groups such as
the Progressive Policy Institute and Third Way, to economists such as Hoover Institution
Nobel laureate Michael Spence, to chief executives and former chief executives such as
Dow Chemical’s Andrew Liveris and Intel’s Andy Grove, the new watchword for America’s
future — however challenging it may be to get there — is manufacturing.

Post-industrial America turned out to be a bust. The time for neo-industrial America has
arrived.

[email protected]

Link -->> The fallacy of post-industrial prosperity - The Washington Post

 

[Digital_Angel_316]

Fascism
by Sheldon Richman
THE CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ECONOMICS

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives
from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a
protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium
between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful
competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and
socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of
nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical
liberalism and Marxism.

* Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic
processes through direct state operation of the means of production,
fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally
private owners.

* Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so,
nationalized property - implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property
in the “national interest”— that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it.
(Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.)

* Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the
appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities.

* Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the
monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this,
fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State
ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and
under what conditions.
​

Fascism is to be distinguished from interventionism, or the mixed economy.
Interventionism seeks to guide the market process, not eliminate it, as fascism did.
Minimum-wage and antitrust laws, though they regulate the free market, are a far cry
from multiyear plans from the Ministry of Economics.

Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing,
commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels,
prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no
economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of
consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess” incomes had to be surrendered as
taxes or “loans.” The consequent burdening of manufacturers gave advantages to foreign
firms wishing to export. But since government policy aimed at autarky, or national
self-sufficiency, protectionism was necessary: imports were barred or strictly controlled,
leaving foreign conquest as the only avenue for access to resources unavailable
domestically. Fascism was thus incompatible with peace and the
international division of labor—hallmarks of liberalism.

Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade and
industry rather than on geography. In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a
form of socialism originating on the left. The government cartelized firms of the same
industry, with representatives of labor and management serving on myriad local,
regional, and national boards—subject always to the final authority of the dictator’s
economic plan. Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation,
such as lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the
ability to bargain and move about freely.

To maintain high employment and minimize popular discontent,
fascist governments also undertook massive public-works projects
financed by steep taxes, borrowing, and fiat money creation. While
many of these projects were domestic—roads, buildings, stadiums—the largest project of
all was militarism, with huge armies and arms production.

The fascist leaders’ antagonism to communism has been misinterpreted as an affinity for
capitalism. In fact, fascists’ anticommunism was motivated by a belief that in the
collectivist milieu of early-twentieth-century Europe, communism was its closest rival for
people’s allegiance. As with communism, under fascism, every citizen
was regarded as an employee and tenant of the totalitarian, party-
dominated state. Consequently, it was the state’s prerogative to use force, or the
threat of it, to suppress even peaceful opposition.

If a formal architect of fascism can be identified, it is Benito Mussolini, the onetime
Marxist editor who, caught up in nationalist fervor, broke with the left as World War I
approached and became Italy’s leader in 1922. Mussolini distinguished fascism from
liberal capitalism in his 1928 autobiography:

The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social
right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its
corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into
productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to
fulfill. (p. 280)

Link -->> Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

 

[Digital_Angel_316]

Fascism
by Sheldon Richman
THE CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ECONOMICS

* fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer.

* fascism sought control of a society’s economic processes indirectly,
through domination of nominally private owners.

* fascism nationalized property - implicitly, by requiring owners to use
their property in the “national interest”— that is, as the autocratic
authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by
the state.)

* Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the
appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities.

* Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the
monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this,
fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State
ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and
under what conditions.
​

* Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of
manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines,
production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms.

* Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without
government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess”
incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or “loans.”

* The consequent burdening of manufacturers gave advantages to foreign
firms wishing to export. But since government policy aimed at autarky, or national
self-sufficiency, protectionism was necessary: imports were barred or strictly controlled,
leaving foreign conquest as the only avenue for access to resources unavailable
domestically. Fascism was thus incompatible with peace and the
international division of labor—hallmarks of liberalism.

* Fascism embodied corporatism, in which political representation was based on trade
and industry rather than on geography.

* In this, fascism revealed its roots in syndicalism, a form of socialism originating on the
left. The government cartelized firms of the same industry, with representatives of labor
and management serving on myriad local, regional, and national boards—subject always
to the final authority of the dictator’s economic plan.

* Corporatism was intended to avert unsettling divisions within the nation, such as
lockouts and union strikes. The price of such forced “harmony” was the loss of the ability
to bargain and move about freely.

* To maintain high employment and minimize popular discontent,
fascist governments also undertook massive public-works projects
financed by steep taxes, borrowing, and fiat money creation. While
many of these projects were domestic—roads, buildings, stadiums—the largest project of
all was militarism, with huge armies and arms production.

The fascist leaders’ antagonism to communism has been misinterpreted as an affinity for
capitalism. In fact, fascists’ anticommunism was motivated by a belief that in the
collectivist milieu of early-twentieth-century Europe, communism was its closest rival for
people’s allegiance. As with communism, under fascism, every citizen
was regarded as an employee and tenant of the totalitarian, party-
dominated state. Consequently, it was the state’s prerogative to use force, or the
threat of it, to suppress even peaceful opposition.

If a formal architect of fascism can be identified, it is Benito Mussolini, the onetime
Marxist editor who, caught up in nationalist fervor, broke with the left as World War I
approached and became Italy’s leader in 1922. Mussolini distinguished fascism from
liberal capitalism in his 1928 autobiography:

The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social
right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its
corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into
productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to
fulfill. (p. 280)

Link -->> Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

Obama appoints GE CEO as JOB CZAR ...
​

January 27, 2011, 9:00 am
Is a Multinational C.E.O. the Best Jobs Czar?

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

In the wake of Jeffrey Immelt’s ascent to the chairmanship of President Obama’s jobs
council, some commentators have questioned whether the leader of General Electric, a
company that has sharply reduced its United States payrolls over the years, is the best
person to be orchestrating a jobs revival.

Among executives of multinational companies, Mr. Immelt is hardly alone in having
presided over a major reduction in domestic jobs amid a major increase in foreign jobs.
Witness the following chart, which shows changes in domestic and foreign employment at
American multinational companies from 1998 through 2008 (that is, the decade leading
up to the financial crisis):

The chart is taken from testimony by Martin Sullivan, an economist and contributing
editor with Tax Analysts, in a discussion of how international tax rules favor foreign,
rather than domestic, job creation, especially by United States multinationals.

As a result of these distorting effects of the current tax code, the leaders of a number of
multinationals — General Electric included — have been calling for a tax holiday, under
which companies could repatriate cash to the United States under a temporarily lower
tax rate of about 5 percent, instead of the full 35 percent corporate tax rate. The
companies have argued for this tax holiday, as well as other changes to the corporate tax
system, as potential ways to encourage more firms to hire American workers.

As the leader of America’s biggest multinational company, Mr. Immelt is expected to
continue pushing for this particular policy in his new role as President Obama’s new jobs
czar. He was chosen, after all, in order to bring the perspective of the business community
to the table during discussions of how to get businesses hiring again.

Unfortunately, though, the evidence on the effectiveness of another similar “tax holiday”
is mixed at best. Which is one reason to be concerned about whether Mr. Immelt’s advice
on how to stimulate job creation may be somewhat complicated by his role with General
Electric.

As Mr. Sullivan of Tax Analysts writes:

Citizens have a right to be concerned the president’s new adviser will
give priority to promoting the competitiveness of U.S. multinationals rather
than the competitiveness of the overall U.S. economy. And why shouldn’t
he? He has a fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders to do exactly that.
​

Link -->> Is a Multinational C.E.O. the Best Jobs Czar? - NYTimes.com

 

[Digital_Angel_316]

Obama 'Green Jobs' Adviser (Czar) Van Jones Resigns Amid Controversy


Published September 06, 2009
| FOXNews.com

White House green jobs adviser Van Jones resigned in the middle of the Labor Day
weekend following persistent controversy over his past remarks and associations.
Jones, who served as an adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality,
had generated mounting criticism over the past week. He earlier issued back-to-back
apologies -- first, for calling Republicans "assholes" during a videotaped address earlier in
the year, and second for signing a petition in 2004 supporting the "9/11 truther"
movement, which believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept.
11, 2001, terror attacks.

The latter development, which came on top of several others, was perhaps the most
devastating and led to calls for his resignation.

Jones stepped down late Saturday.


In a sharply worded statement, Jones said the controversy had become an unceasing
distraction and assailed his critics.


"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have
mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to
distract and divide," Jones said.


He said he had been "inundated" with calls from supporters urging him to "stay and
fight."
"But I came here to fight for others, not for myself," he said. "I cannot in good conscience
ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past.
We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."


Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the council Jones had been advising, said in a statement
that she accepted the resignation, which was effective immediately, and called him a
"strong voice for creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize
renewable resources."


The White House had stayed relatively quiet about Jones as the controversy developed,
leading to speculation that he was on the way out. White House Press Secretary Robert
Gibbs on Friday said only that he "continues to work in the administration."


Asked about the resignation on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Gibbs would not say whether
President Obama ultimately urged him to leave.


"The president and the CEQ accepted his resignation because Van Jones, as he says in his
statement, understood that he was going to get in the way of the president and
ultimately this country moving forward on something as important as creating jobs in a
clean energy economy," Gibbs said, adding that Obama does not endorse Jones'
statements and associations.


"He doesn't, but he thanks him for his service to the country," Gibbs said.


White House adviser David Axelrod said Obama did not order Jones out of the
administration, but commended him for the decision to step down. Axelrod said Jones
showed his "commitment" to his cause by removing himself "as an issue."


"The political environment is rough, so these things get magnified," he said on NBC's
"Meet the Press."
Jones is considered a rising star in environmental circles. He wrote the New York Times
bestseller "The Green Collar Economy" and has co-founded and worked with several
groups dedicated to helping low-income and minority communities -- often through green
jobs and better environmental policy. He got his start as a San Francisco-area activist.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, speaking on "FOX News
Sunday," called the resignation a "loss for the country."


But critics raised questions about his fitness for a White House-level office, pointing to his
radical activities a decade ago as well as more recent controversial stances.


Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., had demanded that the Senate Green Jobs and
New Economy Subcommittee conduct hearings to probe Jones'
behavior and "reassure the American people that their government is safe from his
divisive, incendiary and ultimately counterproductive sentiments."


Jones was a self-described "communist" during the 1990s and
previously worked with a group dedicated to Marxist and Leninist
philosophies. His comments, even in recent years, were often racially charged. He's
blamed "white polluters and white environmentalists" for "steering poison" to minority
communities. In 2005, he drew a distinction between white and black youths involved in
shooting incidents by referencing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.


"You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never," Jones said. "They always
say, 'We can't believe it happened here. We can't believe it's these suburban white kids.'
It's only them!" he said. "Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to
shoot up the whole school."


Such statements did not draw widespread attention until after a February video surfaced
showing him calling Republicans "assholes" during an address in Berkeley, Calif. Jones
apologized, but faced down his past again when it was discovered that he signed a 2004
statement calling on then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and others to launch
an investigation into evidence that suggests "people within the current administration
may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."


Jones afterward issued a blanket apology for his past statements and said the petition
does not reflect his views. An aide said Jones didn't carefully review the petition at the
time.


But that claim was swiftly disputed by 911Truth.org. "He did agree with that statement
and he did sign on to it," 911Truth.org spokesman Mike Berger told FOX News in a
telephone interview from St. Louis on Friday. Berger said the group's "original board
members individually confirmed all signatories that had signed on to the statement."
The calls for resignation mounted.

And lawmakers said the problems surrounding
Jones spoke to the broader concern about
so-called White House "czars," top advisers
and officials who do not need congressional
approval.

​

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., became the first lawmaker to call on Jones to resign, issuing a
press release calling for a moratorium on the hiring of additional "czars" until the vetting
process in Jones' case could be properly investigated.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said these
officials (appointed Czars) are an "affront to
the Constitution." "When you take all these
people that make policy close to the president
and the White House ... and aren't approved by
the Congress, you're just adding fuel to the fire
by those who think Washington is taking over
everything,"

​

he told "FOX News Sunday."

Read more: Obama 'Green Jobs' Adviser Van Jones Resigns Amid Controversy | FoxNews.com

SEE ALSO: LIST OF U.S. EXECUTIVE BRANCH 'CZARS'
Link -->> List of U.S. executive branch czars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Digital_Angel_316]

Tea Party wants Obama to apologize for Hoffa
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
Sept. 6, 2011

Some conservatives are calling for an apology after Teamsters Union president James
Hoffa described Tea Party members as SOBs during remarks that preceded President
Obama's remarks at a Labor Day event in Detroit.

Saying the Tea Party has launched a "war on workers," Hoffa said: "President Obama, this
is your army. We are ready to march ... Let's take these son-of-a-*****es out and give
America back to an America where we belong," Hoffa said.

Amy Kremer, who chairs the Tea Party Express, called on Obama to "condemn this
inappropriate and uncivil rhetoric."

"Jimmy Hoffa's remarks are inexcusable and amount to a call for violence on peaceful tea
party members, which include many Teamster members," Kremer said in a written
statement.

Tea Party members also aren't happy with Vice President Joe Biden, who told union
members in Cincinnati on Monday that they are "the only folks keeping the barbarians
from the gates."

Link -->> Tea Party wants Obama to apologize for Hoffa

 

[Digital_Angel_316]

National Labor Organizations with Membership over 100,000
Members Union (1)
2,731,419 .....National Education Association of the United States (2)
1,505,100 .....Service Employees International Union (3)
1,459,511 .....American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
1,396,174 .... International Brotherhood of Teamsters (3)
1,311,548 .....United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
828,512 ........American Federation of Teachers
754,978 ........United Steelworkers of America
704,794 ........International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
669,772 ........Laborers' International Union of North America
653,781 ........International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
557,099 ........International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America
545,638 .......Communications Workers of America
522,416 .......United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (2)
455,346 .......Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees
424,579 .......Longshore and Warehouse Union
392,584 .......International Union of Operating Engineers
361,362 .......Maritime Trades
324,043 .......United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe-Fitting Industry of the U.S. and Canada
292,221 .......National Association of Letter Carriers
286,700 .......American Postal Workers Union
271,463 .......International Association of Fire Fighters
269,204 .......National Postal Mail Handlers Union
245,011 .......Paper, Allied-Industrial, and Chemical International Union
226,975 .......American Federation of Government Employees
180,598 .......Amalgamated Transit Union
152,294 .......American Nurses Association (2)
148,806 .......Sheet Metal Workers International Association
127,278 ...... International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades
125,437 .......International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers
125,398 .......Transport Workers Union of America
125,000 .......Building and Construction Trades
111,851 .......American Association of Classified School Employees (2)
105,460 .......The National Rural Letter Carriers' Association (2)

NOTES:
1. Unless otherwise noted, unions are AFL-CIO affiliated.
2. Not AFL-CIO affiliated.
3. Severed ties with the AFL-CIO in July 2005.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor.

Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

[Digital_Angel_316]

Economic News Release

Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey
Union Members Summary
​

For release 10:00 a.m. (EST) Friday, January 21, 2011 USDL-11-0063

Technical information: (202) 691-6378 * [email protected] * Current Population Survey (CPS)
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * [email protected]


UNION MEMBERS -- 2010


In 2010, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a
union--was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today. The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 612,000 to
14.7 million. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership
rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

The data on union membership were collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly
sample survey of about 60,000 households that obtains information on employment and unemployment
among the nation's civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over. For more information see the
Technical Note.

Highlights from the 2010 data:

--The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was substantially
higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent). (See table 3.)

--Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization
rate at 37.1 percent. (See table 3.)

--Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or
Hispanic workers. (See table 1.)

--Among states, New York had the highest union membership rate (24.2 percent) and
North Carolina had the lowest rate (3.2 percent). (See table 5.)

Industry and Occupation of Union Members

In 2010, 7.6 million public sector employees belonged to a union, compared with 7.1 million union workers
in the private sector.
The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was substantially
higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent). Within the public sector,
local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.3 percent. This
group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers,
and fire fighters.

Private sector industries with high unionization rates included transportation and utilities (21.8 percent),
telecommunications (15.8 percent), and construction (13.1 percent). In 2010, low unionization rates
occurred in agriculture and related industries (1.6 percent) and in financial activities (2.0 percent). (See
table 3.)

Among occupational groups, education, training, and library occupations (37.1 percent)
and protective service occupations (34.1 percent) had the highest unionization rates in
2010. Sales and related occupations (3.2 percent) and farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (3.4
percent) had the lowest unionization rates. (See table 3.)

Demographic Characteristics of Union Members

The union membership rate was higher for men (12.6 percent) than for women (11.1 percent) in 2010.
(See table 1.) The gap between their rates has narrowed considerably since 1983, when the rate for men
was about 10 percentage points higher than the rate for women. Between 1983 and 2010, the union
membership rate for men declined by almost half (12.1 percentage points), while the rate for women
declined by 3.5 percentage points.

In 2010, among major race and ethnicity groups, black workers were more likely to be union members
(13.4 percent) than workers who were white (11.7 percent), Asian (10.9 percent), or Hispanic (10.0
percent). Black men had the highest union membership rate (14.8 percent), while Asian men had the
lowest rate (9.4 percent).

By age, the union membership rate was highest among 55- to 64-year-old workers (15.7 percent). The
lowest union membership rate occurred among those ages 16 to 24 (4.3 percent).

Union Representation

In 2010, 16.3 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union. This group includes both
union members (14.7 million) and workers who report no union affiliation but whose jobs are covered by a
union contract (1.6 million). (See table 1.) Government employees (783,000) comprised about
half of the 1.6 million workers who were covered by a union contract but were not
members of a union. (See table 3.)

Earnings

In 2010, among full-time wage and salary workers;
union members had median usual weekly earnings of $917, while

those who were not represented by unions had median weekly earnings of $717. (See table
2.) In addition to coverage by a collective bargaining agreement, the difference reflects a variety of
influences including variations in the distributions of union members and nonunion employees by
occupation, industry, firm size, or geographic region.

Union Membership by State

In 2010, 31 states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates below that of the U.S.
average, 11.9 percent, while 19 states had higher rates. All states in the Middle Atlantic and Pacific
divisions reported union membership rates above the national average, and all states in the East South
Central and West South Central divisions had rates below it. Union membership rates declined over the
year in 33 states and the District of Columbia and rose in 17 states. (See table 5.)

Eight states had union membership rates below 5.0 percent in 2010, with North Carolina having the
lowest rate (3.2 percent). The next lowest rates were recorded in Arkansas and Georgia (4.0 percent
each), Louisiana (4.3 percent), Mississippi (4.5 percent), South Carolina and Virginia (4.6 percent each),
and Tennessee (4.7 percent). Six states had union membership rates over 17.0 percent in 2010: New
York (24.2 percent), Alaska (22.9 percent), Hawaii (21.8 percent), Washington (19.4 percent), California
(17.5 percent) and New Jersey (17.1 percent).

State union membership levels depend on both the employment level and union membership rate. The
largest numbers of union members lived in California (2.4 million) and New York (2.0 million). About half of
the 14.7 million union members in the U.S. lived in just six states (California, 2.4 million; New York, 2.0
million; Illinois, 0.8 million; Pennsylvania, 0.8 million; Ohio, 0.7 million; and New Jersey, 0.6 million),
though these states accounted for only one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.

Texas had about one-fourth as many union members as New York, despite having 1.9 million more wage
and salary employees. Similarly, North Carolina and Hawaii had comparable numbers of union members
(117,000 and 111,000, respectively), though North Carolina's wage and salary employment level (3.7
million) was about seven times that of Hawaii (511,000).

• Union Membership Technical Note
• Table 1. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by selected characteristics
• Table 2. Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by union affiliation and selected characteristics
• Table 3. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by occupation and industry
• Table 4. Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by union affiliation, occupation, and industry
• Table 5. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state
• Access to historical data for the tables of the Union Membership News Release

LINK -->> Union Members Summary