Despite the unprecedented allocation of resources for union organizing over the last decade, union membership numbers continue to fall in Michigan and around the nation.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last month reported that 938,000, or 20.8 percent, of Michigan's workers belonged to unions in 2000, down from 963,000, or 21.5 percent, in 1999. For the past two years, organized labor could see light at the end of the tunnel, celebrating the fact that the nation's union membership had halted a long slide in membership numbers by remaining even from 1998-2000 - but this year, the losses re-started.

"We recognize that the numbers are not where we want or need them to be," AFL-CIO Organizing Director Mark Splain told the Wall Street Journal. Nationwide, the percentage of American workers who belong to a union dropped to 16.3 million or 13.5 percent in 2000 - a record low. In 1983, unions represented 20.1 percent of all American workers.

After eight years of tremendous economic prosperity, and with signals that the nation's economy is slowing, the lower numbers aren't a good sign. "Another reason the economic downturn is so worrisome to union officials is that organized labor struggles even in good times to replace workers who have left because of automation, retirement and migration of blue collar jobs abroad," wrote the Wall Street Journal last week.

More blunt was Gary Chaison, a Clark University labor expert quoted in the Journal: "(Unions) lose during prosperity and they lose during recession."

Undoubtedly, the loss in membership for unions would have been much greater without the commitment to organizing in recent years. The AFL-CIO has maintained that organizing efforts take time to develop, and remains committed to organizing.

Michigan ranks as the fourth-highest unionized state by percentage, behind New York (25.5 percent), Hawaii and Alaska. In terms of actual number of union members, Michigan also ranks fourth, behind California, New York and Illinois. The statistics show states with the lowest percentage of workers represented by unions are South Carolina (4.0 percent) and North Carolina (3.6 percent).

Government workers across the nation are 40 percent unionized - the highest rate among any occupational group. Among private, nonagricultural industries, the highest unionization rate occurred in transportation and public utilities (24.0 percent). The unionization rate in construction (18.3 percent) was next highest. Some other notable numbers:

• African-Americans continued to have higher unionization rates (17.1 percent) than whites (13.0 percent) and Hispanics (11.4 percent). Among the major worker groups, black men had the highest union membership rate (19.1 percent), while white and Hispanic women had the lowest rates (10.9 and 10.2 percent, respectively). Workers ages 45 to 64 were more likely to be union members than their younger and older counterparts.
• The right-to-work concept is thriving: About 1.7 million wage and salary workers were represented at their workplace by a union in 2000, but were not union members themselves. About half of these workers were employed in government.
• In 2000, the federal numbers show union members had median usual weekly earnings of $696, compared with a median of $542 for wage and salary workers who were not represented by unions.
• Overall, 23 states and the District of Columbia had union membership rates above the U.S. average (13.5 percent), while 27 states had rates below the average. More than half (54 percent) of the 16.3 million union members in the U.S. lived in seven states, including Michigan.