Federal unions, except postal groups, grow as other labor organizations decline

The story of America’s declining union membership is a continuing saga that makes labor leaders wince.

The latest chapter in that story was revealed last week when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released figures showing the percentage of workers who are union members now stands at just 11.3 percent, the lowest level since 1983, when the government began collecting comparable data. Then, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent.

Joe Davidson

Joe Davidson writes the Federal Diary, a column about the federal workplace that celebrated its 80th birthday in November 2012. Davidson previously was an assistant city editor at The Washington Post and a Washington and foreign correspondent with The Wall Street Journal, where he covered federal agencies and political campaigns.

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But federal unions, except for U.S. Postal Service labor organizations, have a different story. By most indications, they are strong and growing.

In May of fiscal year 2012, 1.2 million federal employees were in a bargaining unit, according to the Office of Personnel Management. That’s an increase of almost 98,000 since 2002.

Federal employees are joining unions because the workers want a greater say in their working conditions. Federal labor organizations don’t negotiate pay, as private-sector unions do, but they can provide a way for employees “to participate in solving agency problems,” said Robert M. Tobias, director of public-sector executive education at American University. Tobias also is a past president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Data from the labor statistics bureau indicate that in two of three categories of federal employment, “public administration” (including finance, public safety and congressional agencies) and “other” (including agriculture and health care), union membership and representation are up, sometimes significantly. Federal unions represent all the employees in a bargaining unit, even if all of them aren’t dues-paying members.

In the public administration category, 271,000 federal workers, or 15.3 percent, were union members, and 340,000, or nearly one-fifth, were represented by unions last year. The membership figure is 19,000 more than in the year 2000, and the representation number is up 5,000. The “other” category also demonstrated impressive gains.

The American Federation of Government Employees reports a big membership jump, from 197,014 in 2000 to 282,535 in 2012. That’s a 43 percent increase. Much of that growth comes from the 45,000 Transportation Security Administration employees that AFGE won the right to organize.

“We’ve grown quite a bit in the federal sector,” said Matt Biggs, legislative director of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. He said his union’s membership has “increased dramatically” since 2000 because IFPTE organized two bargaining units at the Government Accountability Office and affiliated with an independent union representing workers at the Tennessee Valley Authority.

National Federation of Federal Employees membership also is up, more than 2,500 since 2007.

In some cases, federal union membership is up, even as agency employment is down.

“Despite declines in the numbers of federal employees in most NTEU-represented agencies, NTEU has seen strong growth in our membership numbers of approximately 14,000 since the year 2000,” said Colleen M. Kelley, NTEU’s president. Over the past decade, NTEU has organized new units, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, Treasury Departmental Offices, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of Thrift Supervision and won a representation election in Customs and Border Protection.