The Cost of Unions

The Cost of Unions - Veronique de Rugy - The Corner on National Review Online
"The Cost of Unions [Veronique de Rugy]

Here is interesting some data:
Unionized public sector workers have much higher average wages and benefits than nonunionized public sector workers.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data in Table 2 show that union members have a 31-percent advantage in wages and a 68-percent advantage in benefits.

This line bears repeating: 'Union members have a 31-percent advantage in wages and a 68-percent advantage in benefits.'

That's from Chris Edwards' work on Public Sector Unions here.
He adds that even when one controls for the fact that states with generally higher wages tend to be more unionized, public-sector unions increase average pay levels by roughly 10 percent.

This information is interesting in the context of the following chart.

It shows that in 2009, for the first time ever, more public-sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a union than did private-sector employees (7.4 million) despite there being five times more wage and salary workers in the private sector.

This helps explain some of the disparities between public- and private-sector compensation."