- Jun 8, 2005
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/23labor.html?hpIn its annual report on union membership, the bureau undercut the longstanding notion that union members are overwhelmingly blue-collar factory workers. It found that membership fell so fast in the private sector in 2009 that the 7.9 million unionized public-sector workers easily outnumbered those in the private sector, where labor’s ranks shrank to 7.4 million, from 8.2 million in 2008.
“They depend on extra money for the public sector, and that puts the Democrats in a difficult position. In four big states — New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California — the public-sector unions have largely been untouched by the economic downturn. In those states, you have an impeding clash between the public-sector unions and the public at large.”
New York and California both have huge budget defecits but the public sector unions have been untouched. Maybe, just maybe the reason we have the defecits is because we hire expensive union workers rather than cheap and efficient non-union workers.