The face of the American labor movement and who it represents is fast morphing from being a representative of gritty blue collar workers to one of well-paid and well-educated government workers, creating its own wage gap, according to a new report.
What’s more: Now one in three government workers belongs to a union and 56 percent of those serve as managers or top level professionals in white collar jobs.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute report issued Tuesday also found that as private labor union membership has plummeted, public union membership has grown and now both have near equal membership numbers.
Both are at about 7.9 million. But since there are five times as many workers in the private secor as in the public sector, at about 20.3 million jobs, the government unions hold huge sway.
“This shift has incentivized unions to become more directly involved in politics and more radical in their demands, since government unions depend on the growth of government for gaining new members—and unlike private employers, the government cannot go out of business,” said the report.
Key findings in the report titled “How Government Unions Undermine Upward Mobility And What Can Be Done about It:”
— In 1952, about 80 percent of union members were blue-collar workers, while 20 percent were white-collar, according to data from the University of Michigan’s American National Election Study. By the mid-1990s, white-collar workers accounted for a majority of union members.
— In 1960, more than 35 percent of union members had not finished high school and only 2 percent had college degrees. On average in 2013, public sector employees had more years of education than private sector workers, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. In 2013, 53.6 percent of workers in the public sector had a bachelor’s, advanced, or professional degree, compared to 34.9 percent of private sector workers.
— A larger share of public sector than private sector workers are employed in “management, professional, and related occupations.” In 2013, 56.2 percent of public sector workers and 37.8 percent of private sector workers were employed in these occupations.
— The typical union member no longer lives in a major city center close to the factory; by the 1990s, union members were more likely to live in suburban than urban areas. According to political scientists Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, as the percentage of public sector union members increased between 1971 and 2004, the fraction of union members in the top third of the nation’s income distribution increased by 24 percent, while the proportion of unionists in the bottom third of the distribution declined by 45 percent.This is because better-educated and more affluent workers are more likely to belong to public rather than private sector unions.
Author Carrie Sheffield said, “Public sector unions may claim they stand up for the little guy, but generally they aren’t representing blue collar workers against a better-educated, white-collar management.”
What’s more, she added, “Unfortunately for taxpayers, government unions donate huge amounts to elected officials who then vote on those expanding benefit packages – much to the detriment of cities like Detroit and Stockton, California and states like Illinois and New Jersey that are on the brink of fiscal insolvency.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
