Unions still strong in state

Union membership may be trending downward nationally, but in California it’s strong. Bureau of Labor statistics released last week show that the percentage of wage and salary workers in California who belonged to a union went up in 2008, from 16.7 percent in 2007 to 18.4 percent, to a total of 2.74 million workers.

That increase brought union membership in the state nearly back to where it was 20 years ago, in 1989, when 18.9 percent of workers belonged to unions.

Nationally, union membership also went up ever so slightly last year, from 12.1 percent to 12.4 percent, an increase of 428,000 workers. The percentage is considerably lower, however, than the 1989 figure of 16.4 percent. Overall, union membership has steadily declined nationally over the past two decades.