Report Unions see sharp membership declines again

From an Associated Press report last Friday:

The nation's labor unions saw another steep decline in membership last year, even as the economy showed signs of recovery and job losses slowed.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that unions lost 612,000 members in 2010, dropping the unionized share of the work force to 11.9 percent from 12.3 percent in 2009.

That follows a loss of 771,000 workers in 2008, continuing a steady decline from the 1950s when more than a third of workers belonged to unions.

Union membership in the private sector fell from 7.2 percent to 6.9 percent, a low point not seen since the infancy of the labor movement in the 1930s.

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