If you're one of the millions of Americans (click here) who wish unions would go away, you're getting your wish.
Last year, union membership declined to 11.3 percent from 11.8 percent of all workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday. Unions lost about 400,000 members last year, lowering their ranks to about 14.4 million members.
This is a level not seen since the 1930s, or the last time America was in a Great Depression.
About half of the loss came as cash-strapped governments cut workers, including police, fire fighters and teachers. As for the private sector, nonunion jobs are coming back and union jobs are not as companies recover from the Great Recession.
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, lamented the latest declines in a string going back to at least the 1980s....
There is this really strange dialogue that exists in the USA and that is that unions are bad for the American economy. There are those that want the American public to believe the unions are stronger than government and taking over the country. It is all lies and Americans need to realize their pay rates rely on competition in the workplace (what other companies are paying their workers for the same jobs) and the minimum wage. Those are the two greatest factors in pay rates. It is time to stop denying the need for unions in the USA, again!
I simply love this graph. It and the article written in the Wall Street Journal is manipulative and full of lies.
Updated Feb. 3, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

Government union members now outnumber private for the first time. (click here)

...This means government is the main playing field of modern unionism, which explains why the AFL-CIO and SEIU have become advocates for higher taxes and government expansion in cities, states and Washington. Unions once saw their main task as negotiating a bigger share of an individual firm's profits. Now the movement's main goal is securing a larger share of the overall private economy's wealth, which means pitting government employees against middle-class taxpayers....

Firstly, there is no such thing as modern unionism. Unions have been unions since the day they were organized. As a matter of fact most of the unions that exist today existed 50 years ago. There is no one stabilizing economic factor in the USA as consistent in beliefs and benefits as labor unions. And that is economic benefit. The good wages and benefit packages for union members directly interprets into economic growth.

 Secondly, the number of public sector unions has not increased and neither have their member numbers, except, for new hires with expanded need in education due to increases in population. The real dynamic at play and why the USA economy cannot recover is that four decades of Republican leadership, beginning with Ronald Reagan. 

 The article was written in 2009 because there was now a Democratic President in the White House and Wall Street was shaking in their boots because of the collapse of 2008 and the fact Labor Unions would become stronger with a functional NLRB.
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce-Bureau of Economic Analysis

 There is a direct relationship in the fall of union membership in the USA and the loss of economic growth.

 DIRECT RELATIONSHIP.

 The Middle Class is the strength of every country. That was EVERY COUNTRY. When a country lacks a strong Middle Class the economy is stagnant and dependent on trade with other wealthier nations to sustain it. The prime example is China. 

 What Wall Street did was completely immoral, stupid and self-destructive. Rather than going to China, building enterprises to staff with Chinese workers and PAY THEM A LIVING WAGE, it paid poverty wages and expected the difference in Chinese and American Labor costs to not effect the profits of the company.

 As American wages fell and a Wall Street dependent on the economic engine of the USA the demand for products declined as well as the price Americans could pay. That was COULD PAY. What entered into the picture was the change of the American economy from vibrant to impoverished. Since the decline in unions in the USA and because of Wall Street Draconianism with CEOs that can't deliver the goods to stockholders because they impoverished their own market base, Walmart became the global answer to managing the populous.

 Quality went out the window. All that was important was supply. Name brand recognition has been obscure and American industrial production waned. 

 It is time for the American Unions to take back the job place. They need to go where workers are most abundant and begin again. If the strength of unions continue to diminish the American economy will be a thing of the past. 

 Unions are the single greatest hope the USA has to return to a growing economy with quality of life for it's citizens.