THE SMITH CENTER

for Private Enterprise Studies

The Future of Unionism

by
David Denholm, President
Public Service Research Foundation

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney issued a stern warning at the labor federation's convention in February. According to press reports, Sweeney told his colleagues, "if we don't begin to turn this (membership decline) around quickly and almost immediately, the drift in the other direction is going to make it virtually impossible to continue to exist as a viable institution and to have any impact on the issues we care about." This statement may reveal more about the union dilemma than intended.

If Sweeney had expressed a concern about having an impact for the "members we care about," it would have been a different matter. Almost fifty years ago the leaders of organized labor abandoned the idea of representing the employment interests of their members in favor of acquiring political power.

Not surprisingly union membership has been declining for almost fifty years. In the mid 1950s about 30 percent of all employees were union members. By 2000 the figure had dropped below 14 percent. Beneath these surface figures a major shift has taken place. In the mid 50's about 40 percent of private sector workers and 12 percent of public employees belonged to unions. By 2000, the figures were reversed with only nine percent in the private sector and almost 38 percent in the public.

That shift has had an impact on internal union politics. In the 1950s only five percent of all union members were public employees. By 2000 that figure was 43 percent and rising. This has changed the focus of union interests. In the 50s, most of organized labor's political concerns dealt with the workplace interests of employees. Now, union political power is devoted to bigger, more costly government and opposition to any effort to reduce taxes.

There are broad societal forces at work that make it unlikely organized labor can reverse its decline. Unions claim to have organized 400,000 new members last year. Yet, in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2000 union membership declined by 219,000. While some of those losses came from economic shifts, many of them were due to attrition. Those who formed the core of membership in the union heyday are retiring and the next generation is much less inclined toward unionism.

Organized labor appears to be unwilling to devote the resources to organizing it would take to reverse its decline. A study done for the AFL-CIO by professors at Cornell revealed that many union officials believed that to devote more resources to organizing they would short change their existing members and risk losing them.

The unions' biggest obstacle to reversing their decline is that the majority of working Americans don't want to be represented by a union.

This can be seen in public opinion surveys and in the results of National Labor Relations Board elections. A recent survey in Michigan found that only 26 percent of workers who were not union members would choose union representation. Unions win about half of NLRB elections but the fact that they win more of the smaller elections and fewer of the larger ones disguises the reality that a strong majority of all workers voting in those elections vote against union representation.

So in the organizing and economic realms the continued decline of unionism seems almost inevitable but the same cannot be said for their political power. Politically their power far exceeds their numbers. That is why unions are increasingly using their political power to get government to coerce employers into imposing unwanted union representation on their employees.

The best example of this is the project labor agreement, an agreement between a government agency and the building trades unions to permit only union members to work on public works construction projects. PLAs have all sorts of cost savings and labor peace window dressing to make them more palatable to the public. Neither of these claims can stand close scrutiny.

The real reason for PLAs is to use the power of government to shore up organized labor's sagging fortunes. This is done at great expense to the taxpayers and in disregard for the interests of the approximately 80 percent of construction workers who have chosen not to be union members.

Such efforts to use political power as a substitute for organizing are a stopgap measure. In the long term they are doomed to failure.

There is some evidence that the unions' class warfare, us-against-them, political rhetoric has contributed to alienating working Americans.

Organized labor's chances for survival might be improved if they were to abandon politics and focus on organizing and representing members. But, just as there are economic and social forces at work that make organizing success very difficult, there are also forces in play that make it virtually impossible for union officials to give up the quest for political power.