(The following appeared on the Wall Street Journal website on February 16, 2011.)
MADISON, Wis. — Union leaders say overhauls of rules for public- and private-sector unions being considered in Wisconsin, Ohio and about a dozen other states threaten to accelerate the decline in membership nationwide and hurt organized labor’s finances and political clout.
On Monday, presidents of more than a dozen of the nation’s biggest unions met to strategize, and pledged more than $25 million to counter efforts to scale back bargaining rights that in many cases would give employees the option of not belonging to a union or paying dues, according to a union official familiar with the matter.
A number of governors in both parties are pushing to change union rules in the face of massive budget deficits driven in part by large pension obligations. Sentiment toward public-sector unions has soured amid cuts in state services, anger over taxes and growing concern over states’ financial burdens.
Additionally, some labor experts say the economic hardships facing states are also providing an opportunity for governors and lawmakers to weaken public-sector unions that have exerted growing political influence in recent years. Even as union membership overall has dropped nationally, it has risen in the public sector. That has made the sector far more heavily unionized than the bigger private sector, and made government workers now the largest single share of workers belonging to unions.
Thus, new curbs aimed at public sector-workers could, besides reducing the number of total unionized workers, ripple across the whole work force, labor leaders say.
A downward spiral in membership would weaken unions’ political influence, particularly in key states such as Ohio and Wisconsin, according to some labor-movement observers.
The full story appears on the Wall Street Journal website.