:: rawblogXport ::

:: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 ::

Union leaders say workers fed up - By WILLIAM L. WATTS , MarketWatch
Overall, the New York-Northern New Jersey metropolitan area has the highest union density rate — 23.3 percent — of any major metro area, and stands well above the nationwide rate of 12 percent.

But membership gains haven't fully kept up with overall employment growth, resulting in a slight drop in the union density rate since the late 1990s, the report's authors found.

"These new findings show a surprising resilience in many New York unions that have succeeded recently in growing their membership just enough to avoid the national trend of declining unionization rates," said Hofstra economics professor Gregory DeFreitas, who serves as director of the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy. "But, even in the country's most highly unionized metro area, unions' organizing efforts and wage gains have not been enough so far to close the enormous gap between the average worker's rising productivity and stagnating real wages."

And while union backers point to data that show workers are worried about the future, particularly health-care, analysts say data shows workers are relatively happy overall.

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