There was a time in America when the typical union member was a blue-collar guy sweating in a Pittsburgh steel mill, screwing together Chevies in Detroit or loading and unloading ships on the San Francisco docks. But things are radically different today because Joe Lunchpail has been replaced by white-collar Todd and Margo Yuppiecrat processing Social Security checks in Baltimore, conducting environmental audits in Denver or keeping the lines moving at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The breakdown of union membership make this change clear: Only 7.3 percent of all private sector employees are union members, while 37.6 percent of all government workers are unionized. Fifty-one percent of all union members are government workers.

As the Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk points out, these numbers ought to be red flags for taxpayers because “government employees don’t strike to get higher wages from a private business — they strike to get higher wages from you.”