Union membership falls in United States
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Union membership around the nation dropped from 12.9 percent to 12.5 percent from 2003 to 2004 but remained steady in the Islands, where 23.7 percent of workers were represented by unions last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Hawai'i's rate of union membership for its 533,000 workers again placed it second in the country. New York led the nation with 25.3 percent of its 2 million workers represented by unions. Last year, 23.8 percent of Hawai'i's workers were in unions.
The only other states above 20 percent last year were Michigan, (21.6 percent) and Alaska, (20.1 percent).
Full-time workers who belonged to unions in 2004 earned a median weekly wage of $781, compared to nonunion workers who earned $612, according to the Department of Labor.
The country as a whole has seen the rate of union membership steadily decline from 20.1 percent in 1983, according to the Labor Department.
But Hawai'i's rate has remained above 20 percent for every year since 1995, when data became regularly available.
Harold J. Dias Jr., president of the Hawai'i State AFL-CIO, which represents 65 unions and 90,000 members, blamed some of the national decline on the legal difficulties of organizing new groups of workers and on large unionized companies that have sent their operations overseas, where they can hire low-cost labor.
Hawai'i's union membership has held steady, Dias said, because of the Islands' plantation tradition, the high cost of living and strong union organizing efforts.
"Unions are a familiar part of life in Hawai'i," Dias said.
Around the country, though, 32 states last year had union membership rates below the 12.5 percent U.S. average, according to the Department of Labor. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia were above the average.
Some 7.8 million union members — about half of the country's 15.5 million union members — last year lived in California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8085.
