Union Membership Falls to 17% of the Work Force

The U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday that only 17% of the nation’s civilian workers were members of unions in 1987, down from 17.5% in 1986 and less than half of the 35.5% of the work force represented by unions at their peak in 1945.

Overall, union membership declined to 16,913,000, down 62,000 from 16,975,000 in 1986, even though 2.5 million new jobs were created last year, according to the the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This represents a loss of members three times as great as between 1985 and 1986, though not as steep a loss as in earlier years during this decade.

Union ranks reached their peak in 1979 with 20,986,000 members, according to the bureau’s Larry Adams.

The proportion of the nation’s wage and salaried employees who are union members has been declining for four decades, but it has been especially sharp during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. When he took office, 23% of the nation’s workers were union members.

In 1987, union membership rates were highest in two major industry groups--government (federal, state and local) and transportation, communications and public utilities. These two industries, according to the bureau, had about twice the proportion of union membership than the 17% national average. Three other groups--manufacturing (23.2%), construction (21%) and mining (18.3%)--also had higher rates than the national average.

Fewer than 10% of the employees in wholesale and retail trade, services, finance, agriculture and insurance and real estate were union members.

Union membership, both in aggregate numbers and as a percentage of the overall work force, declined among among full-time male employees--21.6% in 1986 to 20.9% in 1987--and among whites--16.8% to 16.3%. Aggregate membership figures rose among women, blacks and Latinos but fell proportionately in each of these groups--12.9% to 12.6% among women, 23.5% to 22.6% among blacks and 17.8% to 17.1% among Latinos--because their increased strength in unions did not match their overall growth in the work force.

Workers aged 35 to 64 had the highest unionization rate (about 22%), followed by the 25-to-34 age group (15.7%). Only 7% of workers under 25 and only 8.9% of those over 64 were union members.

The study also noted that, in addition to the 16.9 million workers who were union members, another 2.1 million persons were employed in workplaces where there was a union contract but had declined to join the union. Just over half of these workers were employed in government jobs.

The one slightly encouraging statistic for organized labor was the one showing that the median weekly wage of full-time union workers rose $21 to $444 last year. Pay increases for non-union workers averaged $17.