Membership is up 311,000 across America 

The labor movement's organizing efforts are reaching thousands of new workers eager for the benefits and protections of union membership, according to data released Jan. 25 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The annual report on union membership shows that unions added 311,000 members nationally in 2007, increasing the total number of union members to 15.7 million. It is the largest single-year increase since 1979. Public sector workers had a union membership rate nearly five times that of private sector employees-35.9 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively.

Union members now account for 12.1 per-cent of employed wage and salary workers. The 2007 increase signals a positive trend in union growth.

Union membership had declined from 12.5 percent in 2005 to 12 percent in 2006.
More Americans have gotten the message that unions raise pay-even in typically low-wage occupations. That's certainly the message in "Unions and Upward Mobility for Low-Wage Workers" by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

"When workers have a voice at work, they can dramatically increase their wages and benefits, even in what are traditionally badly paying jobs," says John Schmitt, a senior economist at the center and one of the study's authors.

The report, which analyzes 15 of the lowest paying jobs in the United States, including those of janitors and groundskeepers, found that union workers earned about 16 percent more than their nonunion counterparts.

The report on upward mobility is available at www.cepr.net.