The Associated Press had an interesting article reporting that women are fast becoming the majority of union members and will be the majority in 10 years if current trends continue.

As it stand now, women make up 45 percent of union members today, up from 35 percent in 1983. Apparently white men now only make up 38 percent of the union workforce, down from almost 52 percent in ’83.

The AP notes that this preponderance of women is changing the goals of union negotiators.

“When you have a majority of women in the labor movement, issues like work-family balance, paid sick days and paid parental leave become more important,” said John Schmitt, an economist at the left-leaning think tank and one of the authors of the report.

And what has caused this change? The growth of public, government unions. At this point, the AP reports, that 49 percent of all union members are now working for local, state, and federal workers in public employees unions. 61 percent of public employees are female.

It is some necessary and interesting information to have when considering how to face unions in America. It also goes to show that the road to defeating unions is to have them removed from the public sphere. Unions only recently became pervasive in government as before the so-called little Wagner act in New York, government employees were not unionized. We must return to this status as government employees unions are antithetical to good government.

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