Every late winter, an independent database that tracks union membership in the 50 states releases new numbers for the prior year. The overall picture remains the same: most construction employees in Mass. and across the nation work for merit shops. The percentages may go up or down a bit, but the long-term trend is workers prefer merit shops.
Yet, this news continues to be a surprise to many because organized labor projects a larger than life footprint and political influence. There are a lot of reasons for this; too many to discuss in this post.
We encourage you to review the Union Membership and Coverage Database, available at www.unionstats.com, which calls itself "an Internet data resource providing private and public sector labor union membership, coverage, and density estimates compiled from the monthly household Current Population Survey (CPS) using BLS methods. Economy-wide estimates are provided beginning in 1973; estimates by state, detailed industry, and detailed occupation begin in 1983; and estimates by metropolitan area begin in 1986. The Database, constructed by Barry Hirsch (Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University), David Macpherson (Department of Economics, Trinity University), and William Even (Department of Economics, Miami University),was created in 2002 and is updated annually."
Unlike the union membership data, the merit shop industry is not the source or responsible for this data. It's independent and produced by academics - not anyone in organized labor or on the merit-shop side.
One of the interesting things about the data is, even in state's with the highest construction union membership, it is still dwarfed by the number of merit shop workers.
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