Union jobs disappearing at local, state and national levels, UCLA study finds
The recession is finally taking its toll on national, state and local unionization rates, according to UCLA's annual report on organized labor.
Following an uptick last year, unionization rates fell between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010, by just more than half a percentage point in California and by a full percentage point in the five-county Los Angeles metropolitan area, researchers at UCLA's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) found.
"Given the duration and depth of the recession, it was inevitable that union jobs would be hit," said Lauren Appelbaum, the report's lead author and director of research at the IRLE. "Jobs are continuing to disappear, and unionized jobs continue to disappear along with them."
"The State of the Unions in 2010: A Profile of Union Membership in Los Angeles, California and the Nation" publishes on Labor Day, Sept. 6.
Even with the losses, the Los Angeles metro area accounts for nearly half of the union members in California, which is the most heavily unionized state in the nation.
"In recent years, unions in Los Angeles have been at the head of the pack, and they've been having successes that unions are not having elsewhere," said IRLE director Christopher C. Tilly, a professor of urban planning at the UCLA School of Public Affairs. "That makes Los Angeles an important laboratory for unions and for labor-watchers."
The findings in the report are based on labor figures in the U.S. Current Population Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S Census Bureau. The UCLA report tracks year-to-year changes in unionization for the nation, California and the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which includes the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, Ventura and San Bernardino.
