Today America observes Labor Day, as it has every year since 1894.
The holiday was ostensibly meant to pay a tribute to the “strength and esprit de corps of trade and labor organizations” — but the subtext has always been about unions flexing their political muscle.
Atrophied muscle, to be sure — even in New York City, long a “union town,” membership has been in steady decline — but muscle nonetheless.
Such vitality as does persist in the movement resides in public-sector unions — whose relatively generous wages and benefits are funded by tax dollars.
In New York, for example, there is an astounding 57 percentage-point gap between private- and public-sector unionization rates, according to a new report by CUNY researchers. While fewer than 14 percent of private-sector workers in the city are unionized — itself twice the national rate — fully 71 percent of public employees in the city and state are union members.
Still, even the powerful public-sector unions like AFSCME and the various state and national teachers unions are finding their members hard to keep in line.
Consider that membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees has declined 70 percent since 2001, when that state required public-sector unions to have annual votes reauthorizing dues collection.
Indiana stopped automatic dues collections from public employees in 2005; now there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. Similar declines have been seen with the end of automatic dues collections in Utah and Washington.
This is also the year that public-sector unions suffered huge defeats in Wisconsin — then failed, after a national campaign, to recall Republican legislators who’d voted to curb their power.
Unfortunately, the situation remains far bleaker in New York — which ranks dead last among the states in a report by the Competive Enterprise Institute.
The survey compares 23 different aspects and 1,150 different laws and regulations pitting Big Labor’s interests against those of taxpayers — with Empire State taxpayers garnering a meager four points out of 40.
And that, fueled by the unions’ political spending, has created a situation in which public-sector labor’s gains are bankrupting states and municipalities — with New York near the head of the list.
Taxpayers here are also ceding control of such vital areas as education and health care to the virtual control of the unions.
Yes, the American labor movement has helped move millions of workers into the middle class. That’s a record of which labor can — and should — be proud.
But Big Labor today — and particularly the public-sector unions — no longer serves those who are simply eager for any job and willing to work.
It serves itself.
That’s the sad truth of Labor Day 2011.