Some Good News on Unionization

Ben Zipperer and John Schmitt on the today's BLS report on unionization:

For the first time in the past quarter of a century, in 2007 U.S. unions increased their share of membership among workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) annual union membership report released today. Unions added about 310,000 members last year, raising the unionized share of the workforce to 12.1 percent from 12.0 percent in 2006.

The increase is small, and may well reflect statistical variation rather than an actual increase in the union membership share, but the uptick is striking because it is the first time since the BLS began collecting annual union membership rates in 1983 that the union share has increased.

....

Even if the increase is a statistical blip, it seems at a minimum that we've finally hit bottom on unionization, and as Big Audio Dynamite sang in the best non-blues song ever written about economic decline: "when you hit the bottom line, the only thing to do is climb ...."