The Real Reason for the Decline of American Unions
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Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Today, the Bureau of Labor Statisticsreleased its annual summary of unionization in the U.S. Itreports that in 2012, the union-membership rate of wage andsalary workers was 11.3 percent, compared with 11.8 percent in2011. The trend has been downward for some time: Fifty yearsago, the figure was almost 30 percent.
It’s conventional wisdom that the post-industrial workforcedoesn’t want to be unionized. But survey data show that workers’desire to join unions has been growing since the 1980s, and amajority of nonunion workers would now vote for unionrepresentation if given the opportunity. So if workers wantunions, why is unionization falling?