All of us owe a lot to labor gains
Monday is the holiday that honors the American labor movement. Politicians from across Virginia will march in Buena Vista and there's a parade in Covington, too.
But what about Roanoke-area union members? Many of them won't be celebrating.
Local 1023 of the United Steelworkers, which represents 650 or so workers at the Yokohama Tire plant, will hold a picnic in Hardy.
Local 82161 of the IUE-CWA, which represents 286 workers at Salem's General Electric plant, is throwing no party. Some of its members will be working.
The local sheet metal workers union has nothing planned. Ditto for the Southwestern Virginia Building & Construction Trades Council, and for the Western Virginia Labor Federation.
That's an umbrella organization of 38 union locals representing 15,000 to 16,000 workers from Staunton and Lynchburg down to the coalfields in Virginia's southwestern corner.
Mike Mays, president of the labor federation, said it had hoped to stage a parade in Bristol. But that got fouled up by the Communications Workers of America strike against Verizon. The CWA was going to organize the parade, he said.
This is a shame. It's kind of like Christians not celebrating Christmas, or sweethearts ignoring Valentine's Day.
When you consider union membership both regionally and nationally, though, it's not hard to understand the lack of enthusiasm.
Organized labor is down in our region largely because many textile and furniture manufacturers have closed up shop and moved out in recent years.
It's down across Virginia, too. Right now there are 159,575 union members in the state. Back in 1991 there were almost 210,000, said Doris Crouse-Mays, president of the Virginia AFL-CIO.
She traces the decline to free trade agreements back then that encouraged manufacturers to move their operations out of the country, where they can pay low-ball wages nobody here would ever work for.
Nationally, the percentage of private industry union workers in 2010 was 6.9 percent, down from a peak of 35.7 percent in the late 1950s. It was 8 percent in 1930.
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Organized labor is down in our region largely because many textile and furniture manufacturers have closed up shop and moved out in recent years. It's down across Virginia, too. Right now there are 159575 union members in the state.
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