2/01/01 4:40 p.m.
The Union Slump
The labor movement loses strength.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

s if the prospect of a labor secretary who will enforce the Beck decision weren't bad enough, the labor movement heard even more unwelcome news two weeks ago when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released figures showing the union membership has declined to its lowest point since the Second World War. Only 13.5 percent of American workers belong to a union today. Of these, about four in ten work for the government. If current trends continue, there will soon be more unionized public-sector employees than private ones.

Now comes evidence that unions are losing their political grip even on their own members. Americans for Tax Reform, the conservative lobby, had The Polling Company survey members of unions and union households on Election Day. In 1996, President Clinton carried voters in union households by a two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 31 percent. Last year, Gore beat George W. Bush by a much slimmer margin, 53 percent to 43 percent. Sixty percent of union households owned guns, and among these voters the results were split: 48 percent apiece for Gore and Bush. (Taken together, these findings imply that members of union households without guns voted 61 to 36 percent for Gore; and that union gunowners were 33 percent more likely than non-owners to vote for Bush — at least if we've done our math right. CNN's exit poll, by the way, found that among all gunowners, Bush won 61 to 36 percent.)

The poll also revealed that members of union households are more likely to be pro-life than the public generally. Respondents additionally were asked this open-ended question: "In your opinion, what one political event will Bill Clinton be most remembered for during the past eight years?" Half of all voters in union households said the Lewinsky scandal, versus 40 percent of the public generally.

A final interesting datum from the ATR poll: Among voters who belonged to households including a union member, 71 percent hold investments in stocks or mutual funds either directly or through a 401(k) plan or a pension. This finding mirrors that of John Zogby's pre-election poll, which found that union members are now more likely to hold investments than non-union members.

Labor and Delivery
You're going to be seeing a lot more of Linda Chavez: The former labor secretary nominee has signed on with Fox News as a commentator.

On the Site
Melissa Seckora on deadwood at the NEA.