Union membership in New York City remains the highest in the country but has declined in recent years, according to a new (but not yet publicly released) report from the City University’s Murphy Institute. The report’s main finding, as summarized by Crain’s NY Business:
Among workers living in the city, 22.9% were union members in the 18 months ending in June, down from 24.6% in January 2009 through June 2010, the report found. Losses in union membership have been disproportionately concentrated in the private sector.
Huh? “Insulated” would probably be a better world than “isolated.” And far from being a risk, it’s already a fact: public-sector union members generally enjoy greater job security, pay and benefits than their private-sector counterparts.
Continuing from Crain’s:
Indeed, in many of the recent labor battles around the country, a familiar refrain has been that public-sector workers receive benefits that many private sector workers don’t. As the gap between public- and private-sector unionization widens, it becomes harder for the public sector unions to hang on to their gains.
“Like your grandmother said, ‘You don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’” said Ed Ott, a distinguished lecturer at the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies and former labor leader. “We’re too heavily concentrated in the public sector.”
And as the economy sputters, that sector’s density is now also in danger of declining …
Public-sector union density “in danger of declining” in New York? Uh, dream on. New York’s state and local governments are an agency shop — meaning that the vast majority of their employees are compelled to pay union dues.
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