TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dickens,William T.
AU  - Leonard,Jonathan S.
TI  - Accounting For The Decline in Union Membership
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1275
PY  - 1985
Y2  - September 1985
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1275
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1275.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
William Dickens
School of Public Affairs
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland  20742-1821
Tel: 301 405-3494
E-Mail: wtdickens@gmail.com

Jonathan S.. Leonard
Graduate School of Business
350 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA  94720
Tel: 415/642-7048
E-Mail: leonard@haas.berkeley.edu
AB  - Since the early 50s, the percent of the workforce organized by unions has declined considerably. In the most recent decade that rate of decline has accelerated sharply. In an attempt to discover what factors can account for the overall decline and the further deterioration during the 70s, we decompose the sources of growth and decline to determine the relative importance of changes in organizing activity, success in certification elections, decertifications, and net growth due to economic causes. We find that all factors except decertifications account for a substantial part of the change. In addition, interactions between the factors are very important. A significant finding is that while organizing activity and success rates have been declining over time, the net growth (or loss) of membership due to economic causes has remained stable controlling for the aggregate level of economic activity. We argue that this finding is inconsistent with the prevailing view that the decline in the percent of the workforce organized is primarily due to the decline of the heavily unionized core industries.
ER  -