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52% of All Union Members are Government Employees
by KPA 
From the Wall Street Journal:
What is newsworthy, however, is another figure reported by the BLS: 52 percent of all union members work for the federal or state and local governments, a sharp increase from the 49 percent in 2008.[5] A majority of American union members are now employed by the government; three times more union members now work in the Post Office than in the auto industry.[6]
While the fact that the majority of union members are government employees is historic, the growth of government employee unions is hardly a recent development. Union membership has steadily grown in government and shrunk in the private sector since the 1970s.
Read the rest of a very interesting study here; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704509704575019552907349936.html
02/05/10 01:14:58 pm, 
4 comments
As a matter of curiosity, if unionized government workers strike - who are they striking against?
If we set pay and are responsible for the work environment of government, regardless of the decisions, would "we the people" not be the focus of a strike?
This from the article; The labor movement has, thus far, been very successful in this goal. The average worker for a state or local government earns $39.83 an hour in wages and benefits compared to $27.49 an hour in the private sector.[13] While over 80 percent of state and local workers have pensions, just 50 percent of private-sector workers do.[14] These differences remain after controlling for education, skills, and demographics.[15] Taxpayers now pay for unionized government jobs paying notably more than those available in the private sector.
I have very good friends employed by government and a government funded job put food on my childhood table. Doesn't change the fact runaway government has tipped the scales to it's favor.
Government not only doesn't produce revenue, it can only exist by taking revenue from the private sector. One that's already trailing it in growth.
A recent study
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/unions-states-2010-02.pdf
finds that
"Across all the states, however, unionization is strongly
associated with increases in overall compensation,
measured here by hourly wages and health and pension
benefit coverage. In the typical state, unionization is
associated with about a 15 percent increase in hourly
wages (roughly $2.50 per hour), a 19-percentage-point
increase in the likelihood of having employer-provided
health insurance, and a 24-percentage-point increase in
the likelihood of having employer-sponsored retirement
plans."
I doubt that all the differences can be attributed to unionization of government employees...there still are some private sector work that is unionized...but everybody who sells anything benefits when people get adequately compensated.
Take ALCOA, TVA, and Oak Ridge out of the local labor market and see how prosperous we would be. And how many new bass boats and cars would be bought.