More on Union Membership

by Brad Peck

More excitement over the Labor Department’s union membership report yesterday, including this attempt at analogy.

"Unfortunately some sites downplay the importance, but in 25 years of membership loss an upward swing could be considered twice as important. Think US football when the team throws an interception and the other team scores, in essence it is considered a 14 point turnaround. Twice the actual 7 point score. Workers just got a touchdown or 2 depending how you look at it. I see two and more to come in '08"

I don't really see "essentially unchanged" as a two touchdown swing, more like a coach challenging the review of a spot and the officials moving the ball half an inch, not enough for the first down, but hey, he won the challenge.

"Essentially unchanged" is the key phrase, and the AP noted it.   

The Washington Post let the Chamber give our perspective:

Randel K. Johnson, a vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called the reported growth the result of a "rounding error."

"This is a very slight, marginal increase," Johnson said. "For all the talk of organized labor putting more and more resources into organizing, this bump is insignificant."

John Edwards used the occasion to re-iterate his support for the Employee Free Choice Act, ignoring the clear lessons of the Nevada caucus.

Comments

[A Citizen]

Senator Kennedy's January 25, 2008 nasty blasting of the President's nomination of Robert Battista to serve again as NLRB Chairman comes the same day that the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the largest gain in union members since it began reporting annual union membership rates in 1983. The AFL-CIO trumpeted the news as the largest single-year increase since 1979. All of this despite the Senator's claim - "the most anti-worker, anti-labor, anti-union Board in its history...." (Not included was the AFL-CIO's "anti-middle class" perjorative du jour). Apparently the Senator missed the report that the Bush NLRB in FY 2007 had the highest affirmance rate by the U.S. courts of appeals in its history, 97% in whole or in part and that former Chairman Battista agreed with Member Liebman 62.2% of the time and with former Member Walsh 74% of the time (based on publicly reported panel decisions B,L,S and B,L,W). Senator, your point is?