"Union membership hit hard in past year" by Steven Greenhouse | New York Times, January 24, 2013
NEW YORK — The percentage of US workers in labor unions took an unusually large fall in 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Wednesday.
The total number of union members also took an unusually big drop....
The declines came during a period when labor unions have been on the defensive, a drop that has caused some labor leaders to fear that unions were steadily fading into irrelevance for many large employers....
In recent months, however, there has been an uptick in union activity among nonunion workers, as evidenced by labor protests at Walmart stores across the nation and a one-day strike by fast-food workers in New York City in November.
Related: Quick Lunch
Yeah, the "efforts seemed to do little.... Walmart said it was its best Black Friday ever."
In those job actions, the workers were protesting what they said were low wages and meager benefits. But union officials acknowledge that it is often hard, in the face of intense employer resistance and employee fears of layoffs, to persuade a majority of workers at a big-box store or other workplaces to vote to unionize.
Richard L. Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main union federation, responded to the labor report in a statement, saying, ‘‘Working women and men urgently need a voice on the job today, but the sad truth is that it has become more difficult for them to have one, as today’s figures on union membership demonstrate.’’
Among states, North Carolina had the lowest unionization rate, the BLS report said. New York had the highest rate....
