Changing Landscape Unions at inception unions, members consisted "blue-collar" workers concentrated manufacturing sector. Today, 35% union members remain sector, requires unions expand manufacturing broaden membership ranks.
Noting that the union rate has significantly dropped in the last 30 years is almost a truism. Statistics, however, are the best instruments to make this argument: the union membership rate has dropped to 12.4% in 2008 from 20.1% in 1983 (Butcher, 2009). The drop comes, overall, from the significant decrease of unionization in the manufacturing sector, with a direct impact on the private sector overall. While some of the traditional public sectors still have a big unionization rate (teachers, police etc.), today only one in ten workers from the manufacturing industry are still part of a union. In 1983, this proportion was 30% (Butcher, 2009).
This is not necessarily a trend that is noticeable only in the U.S. Other developed countries, including, for example, Australia, have followed similar developments...
The reasons for this include the increasing competitiveness on the labor market in a globalized economy. The shifting of jobs to countries with lower wages and the outsourcing trend that has dominated the manufacturing industry in the last three decades has diminished the powers that unions have in bargaining for the workers' wages. With a diminished power, unions had a greater difficulty in attracting new members, given that the primary tool was the lobbying power that unions had.
With this in mind, reforms that unions should consider to broaden their appeal to the workplace environment should build on the strengths they still have. These include the litigation capacities, as well as the portfolio of instruments that make unions viable entities in lobbying for preferred legislation (Ortiz, 2012). In addition, unions should consider a public relations campaign that could shift the public's perception from negatively judging the role of unions to understanding the necessity of unions in protecting workers'…
