The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

fter decades of dwindling numbers, union membership is growing, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. In 2008, total union membership rose by over 400,000 to 16.1 million.

The increase ends a long trend of decreasing union membership. It is likely that membership is growing because union jobs tend to be more stable and have better wages and benefits, even when the economy is bad.

Most of that growth was due to an increase in the number of federal, state and city government workers who joined unions. Current law makes it easier for government workers to join unions than private-sector employees, whose employers tend to be more aggressive in blocking employees from forming a union. The rate of union membership for government workers was nearly five times higher than that of non-government workers in 2008.

The low rate of non-governmental union membership makes legislation like the Employee Free Choice Act more important than ever. The legislation, which has not yet been introduced in the current session of Congress, would give workers the option to choose how to form a union, either by ballot or by getting a majority of employees to sign a union-authorization card.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has called the Employee Free Choice Act "the most important legislation helping workers economically in many, many years."