Union-Nonunion Earnings Differentials and the Decline of Private-Sector Unionism

Recent years have been difficult ones for the American labor movement. Especially during the past half-decade, the economic and political environment for unions has become increasingly hostile-dominated by a growing anti-union sentiment in manage ment; the adverse effects of industrial restructuring, import competition, deregulation, and high unemployment; and the tightening constraints of a labor law and NLRB enforcement mechanism that have become markedly less supportive of unions. These and other external changes, as well as some continuing internal weaknesses, have thrust unions into a period of declining union membership, eroding bargaining strength, repeated contract concessions, and what at least some observers have perceived as the beginning of a new era bindustrial relations (Thomas Kochan and Michael Piore, 1985; Edwards and Michael Podgursky, 1986)