If Connecticut unions sank back into decline in 2010, it was not long into 2011 before they received uplifting news ”“ if the kind of news business owners did not want to get from Gov. Dannel M. Malloy who made a point of reaching out to them as one of his first acts as governor.
In Malloy”™s appointment of Carpenters Union Local 2010 leader Glenn Marshall as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Labor, many in Fairfield County privately saw the move as a concession to unions for their support in the recent elections ”“ and as an important ally as Malloy negotiates with state employee unions over pay and benefits in an effort to cut the state budget.
Those unions will be battling to hang onto those benefits as small and mid-size companies throughout the state assume a greater voice in how the state runs its affairs.
“I would suggest that small businesses and minority businesses in many respects have replaced unions as a very progressive force in the U.S. economy and the political scheme,” said Fred McKinney, president of the Hamden-based Greater New England Minority Supplier Business Council, speaking at a Hartford gathering of the Partnership for Strong Communities. “If you look at the history of unions in this country, they just didn”™t pop out of nowhere, they popped out of the situation where workers were struggling ”¦ If you look right now at our economy, those issues are most manifest if you look at the minority business community.”
Numbers are dwindling
Union membership in Connecticut shrank last year to 16.7 percent of all those employed, according to estimates last month by the U.S. Department of Labor, down from 17.3 percent a year earlier.
While that was the slowest decline of any of Connecticut”™s neighboring states, it also reversed two straight years of gains as measured by percentage of the work force. Union membership hit its high point of the decade in 2008 in Connecticut, when DOL estimated 275,000 people belonged to a union, a figure that would drop by 17,000 people just two years later.
Membership in New York fell a full percentage point to 24.2 percent of the work force, maintaining its status as the most heavily unionized state in the nation ahead of Alaska.
New Jersey trailed only Michigan for the sharpest drop in the nation at 2.2 percent. Massachusetts was only slightly behind that with a 2.1 percent decline.
North Carolina has the lowest union membership in the nation at just 3.2 percent of the work force there.
”˜A balanced approach”™
Nationally, the number of workers belonging to unions declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million. That represents more than a 50 percent decline over the past few decades, according to Prof. Barry Bluestone, a labor expert at Northeast University in Boston who spoke alongside McKinney at the Partnership for Strong Communities.
“With the union movement”™s membership so low, private unions have lost much of their power to protect their own members,” Bluestone said. “More importantly ”“ at least to me ”“ (unions have lost their) power to be an important force for progressive change in the country, in a period of time when there”™s a lot of reactionary forces.”
Malloy said Marshall brings a balanced approach to the job and that he wants a department that is not opposed to growth, but underlined he expects increased vigilance over employer abuses.
“I want a labor-friendly labor department, and I want a management-friendly labor department ”“ I want people to work together,” Malloy said. “I”™m trying to send a message that this is a very balanced, even approach.
“Having said that, I want to be very clear ”“ I think that we need to step up enforcement at this agency,” Malloy added. “We have not devoted, in my opinion, sufficient resources to enforcement to ensure ”¦ that employers are playing by the rules. So yeah, I”™m trying to send a balanced message ”“ that”™s exactly what I am trying to do.”
