An unprecedented trend is reshaping the contemporary American workplace: U.S. workers are headed in one direction even as union leaders and their bought-and-paid-for politicians and bureaucrats in Washington are going full-gallop in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, this development is rarely if ever mentioned in the news pages of the liberal precincts of the mainstream media. That absence is especially unfortunate because the way Americans work is undergoing fundamental change.

For their part, workers are leaving traditional labor unions and have been doing so for years. Union membership in private sector companies was 6.7 percent in 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Private sector union membership peaked at nearly 36 percent of the workforce in the mid-1950s. It’s been downhill ever since. Government workers remain by far the most unionized, at 35.3 percent. Together, the overall percentage of the nation’s workforce that is unionized was only 11.3 percent, representing 14.5 million employees.