February 1, 2012

Some good Union numbers

From Mike Antonucci writing at Hot Air:
Are Unions Literally Dying Off?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report on union membership and if you squinted really hard, you could find some good news for labor organizations in it. There were 49,000 additional union members in 2011, and the unionization rate fell only one-tenth of a percentage point, to 11.8 percent of the total workforce.
A bit more:
The AFL-CIO boasted of the 15,000 new members in the 16-to-24 age group, while failing to notice that number is down more than 200,000 from just four years ago. The leftist publication In These Times saw the BLS numbers as a mixed bag, and commented they �give little hint of the future.�

On the contrary, the numbers give us a rather large hint of the future, and herald a slow, lingering death for unions of all types without a change in organizing strategy.

The Baby Boomers naturally have comprised the bulk of the U.S. workforce for many years. As the workforce has aged, you would expect union membership to age as well. However, an examination of the last ten years of data reveals that union membership is aging at an accelerated rate relative to the rest of the workforce.

In 2001, 6.3 percent of union members were below that age of 25. Last year, only 5 percent were. That�s not encouraging, but the other end of the spectrum is truly alarming. In 2001, 14 percent of union members were 55 years of age or older. Last year, 23.3 percent were. Almost half a million working union members are 65 or older. During the last 10 years, not only did unions lose more than 1.5 million members, but 1.1 million additional members entered the 55-and-over age group.

This creates a demographic storm that unions have not faced in recent memory. Over several decades they have been unable to increase membership at the same rate as the growing workforce. Now, even as the overall size of the workforce slows or stalls, they will find themselves needing to grow at a rate to replace retiring and deceased members.
As I have said before, Labor Unions had their place 50-100 years ago but they have fallen victim to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
So true... Posted by DaveH at February 1, 2012 3:42 PM
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