Union Jobs Plummet in the Private Sector {NY}

[xchrom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/nyregion/union-jobs-in-private-sector-plummet-in-new-york.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

New York City has regained all of the jobs it lost during the last recession, but its labor unions have not, and the steep decline in the last several years may signal a lasting erosion of one of the few remaining bastions of union power, according to the authors of a report to be released this week.

The number of city residents with union jobs in the private sector has dropped by nearly 20 percent since the recession started in 2008, the report by scholars at the City University of New York shows. That amounts to a loss of about 95,000 union jobs, and a decline twice as steep as that for the rest of the nation, said Ruth Milkman, a sociology professor who wrote the report with Laura Braslow.

“This is a big decrease,” Professor Milkman said, and she said it was unlikely to turn around anytime soon. Indeed, as the city’s private sector has added jobs at a healthy rate for much of the past two years, the number of union jobs in the public sector rose but private-sector unions did not rebound, she said.

The study coincided with a report from the Fiscal Policy Institute that found that most of the jobs that have been created in the city during the economic recovery have been in industries that tend to pay low wages, including restaurants, retail and home health care.

[badtoworse]

1. Unions should look at themselves as providers of a service, e.g. carpentry, steel erection, etc.

What do most service providers do when they are faced with declining sales?