In honor of Labor Day, I’ve occasionally written columns (2010, 2011, and 2020) about the role of unions in a free economy.

Let’s repeat that exercise this year, starting with this video from John Stossel.

American workers agree with Stossel’s assessment.

Here’s a chart showing that union membership has plummeted in recent decades. And the drop is steady regardless of which party controls the White House.

The above image comes from an editorial in the Washington Post.

Here are some excerpts.

In 2022, Gallup…asked nonunion workers how interested they were in joining. The most common answer, given by 58 percent of respondents, was “not interested at all.” …no matter which party controls the White House, the union membership rate has gradually fallen for decades. …Americans think unions are a nice idea — for other people. And the gap between what they imagine unions could be and what they actually are does not compel them to sign up to these relics of a bygone economy.

This tweet from Chris Freiman probably helps to explain why most Americans are not interested in unions.

Simply stated, wages keep rising, even as union membership and power is declining.

But there is an exception.

Unions have a very strong foothold among government bureaucrats.

Here are more passages from the Post‘s editorial.

Where union membership has been durable is in the public sector. Even in countries with higher overall rates than the U.S., it’s common for the government to have a much higher union density than private industry. …these unions bargain against a jurisdiction’s taxpayers, seeking greater government spending and more expansive programs. Thus, government unions are not so much labor groups as they are political organizations.

This chart from the editorial illustrates the divergence between bureaucrat unionization and private-sector unionization.

Since I’ve written columns about the adverse effect of teacher unions and police unions, I’m obviously not a fan of bureaucrats unionizing.

And I’m not alone. Here’s a tweet noting that government unions seem to be universally counterproductive.

My two cents is that government should not be pro-union or anti-union.

Here’s an excerpt from an article I wrote a long time ago for Villanova Law Review.

…government should not interfere with certain personal decisions, including the freedom of employers and employees to contract freely, unfettered by labor regulations. …My position is one of strict neutrality. The government should not take side in employer-employee issues. …this is a question of property rights. If another person owns a business, I do not have a right to interfere with his choices as to what he does with his property – so long as he does not interfere with my rights of life, liberty, and property.

Sadly, as John Stossel pointed out in the video, many laws today tilt the playing field in favor of private-sector unions.

P.S. This cartoon accurately shows the problem with bureaucrat unions.

P.P.S. I don’t like when private-sector unions lobby for policies that will hurt non-union workers and I don’t like when taxpayers are asked to absorb the costs of union corruption and industrial inefficiency.