Labor Trends
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Union Labor Trends
November 10, 2003
Trends in the Global Labor Union Climate
Labor union membership peaked at 34.7% in 1954 and has been declining ever since, reaching a low of 16.1% in 1991 (Congressional Digest, 1993). In the past two years, however, the unions have started recruiting again. So far they have replaced fewer than 400,000 of the 4.6 million members they had lost (The Economist, March 1995). Union membership had been declining due to a number of structural changes in the workplace and society.
The Economist's "Adapt or Die" article suggests that it is not politics, but wider changes in the workplace and society, that have hurt the unions. First, union density (the percentage of the workforce that belongs to a union) was found by Jonus Pontusson to be closely correlated with plant size. Historically, labor disputes tended to focus on the traditional labor issues of union recognition, wages, workplace safety and workplace "due process" (meaning "just cause" provisions, grievance procedures, etc...