Also quite unexpectedly, the number of union members in the private sector was slightly higher than those in the public sector year-over-year. While the numbers were hailed by supporters of organized labor, they weren’t dismissed by at least one anti-union group, which acknowledged an uptick in efforts to unionize workers, especially in “non-traditional industries.”
Echoing President Obama’s State-of-the-Union pledge to narrow the country’s widening income gap, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez suggested that union membership can still serve as an entrée to middle-class status.