A report in the January 20 edition of The New York Times hailed a great reversal of fortune for labor unions.  It seems that union membership in 1999 actually grew in both the public and private sectors.

    AFL-CIO president John Sweeney took credit and declared: "These numbers show we've gotten this train rolling, and it's picking up speed, but we're not at our destination yet."

    In reality, however, labor unions are still derailed.  When one considers union membership as a percentage of the workforce, the long decline of labor unions continued in 1999.

    Labor union membership as a share of the private sector workforce fell from 9.5 percent in 1998 to 9.4 percent in 1999.  In fact, union membership
as a share of the government workforce even declined, from 37.5 percent in 1998 to 37.3 percent in 1999.