• Soon after taking office, the Clinton administration moved to get union officials more involved in deciding issues traditionally reserved for agency management -- through an executive order that directed agencies to establish "labor-management partnerships."

• Under the order, unions can demand to bargain over whether an agency will add staff positions and at what pay grade -- as well as over the use of technology and other aspects of how the agency works.

• Critics say the new rules give unions an unwarranted policy role, and that now they can even try to shift the burden of downsizing to parts of an agency that are less unionized.

• Knowledgeable observers say it's likely the administration will push proposals to let the unions bargain over layoffs, discipline and contracting out.

Moreover, before Clinton took office, union members could not use paid government time to lobby Congress -- but they can now, thanks to a Federal Labor Relations Authority ruling.

• At the U. S. Customs Service, the federal government has paid for 800 to 840 hours of lobbying a year since 1994.

• The General Accounting Office has found that official time used for lobbying at the Social Security Administration had risen to 413,000 hours in 1995 -- equal to 200 full-time positions.

Source: David A. Price, "Federal Unions' Growing Clout," Investor's Business Daily, March 7, 1997.

• In the 1950s, more than a third of all workers were union members.

• As recently as 1980, more than 20 million workers belonged to a union.

• In 1996, however, there were just 16.3 million union members, 14.5 percent of all employed wage and salary workers, according to the Department of Labor.

This represents a drop of 91,000 union workers just since 1995 -- 0.4 percent of total employment.

For many years, the industries where unions were strong were those where employment was stagnant or declining. Overall manufacturing employment, for example, has fallen by about 2 million since 1980. By contrast, industries where unions traditionally have been weak have grown sharply. Thus employment in services virtually doubled between 1980 and 1996, from 17.9 million to 34.4 million. The only major growth area for unions has been government, where almost 40 percent of workers are now union members.

Another factor leading to union weakness is the declining wage premium for union membership.

• In 1983 the median wage for all private sector union members was 39 percent higher than for non-union members.

• Last year this premium for union workers declined to 27.5 percent, with union members making $584 per week and non-union workers earning $458.

In fact, in some industries there is virtually no premium at all. Union workers in finance, insurance and real estate -- an industry where employment has grown rapidly --made $534 per week in 1996 while non-union workers made $520.

Changing trends in pensions may also be a factor. During the heyday of unions, most pensions were of the defined-benefit variety -- companies took responsibility for investing pension assets and workers were promised a fixed monthly benefit. But over the last 20 years, growing numbers of pensions have been converted to defined-contribution plans in which workers must make their own investment decisions. With many defined-contribution plans invested heavily in corporate stock, workers may now view themselves more as owners than wage-slaves.

Unions often blame Washington for their problems. If only more union-friendly legislation could be passed, they believe, there would be a turnaround in union strength. Hence, vast resources have been poured into anti-NAFTA and anti-Republican efforts -- but to no avail. The trends toward globalization and government downsizing have been too strong to resist. This suggests that Sweeney's new recruitment strategy has more promise.

Source: Bruce Bartlett, Senior Fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, March 10, 1997.

For more analysis by Bruce Bartlett, go to http://www.ncpa.org/oped/bartlett.html

• Between 1992 and 1996, the membership of private-sector unions shrank more than 3 percent -- nearly 320,000 workers -- to 9.4 million.

• During that period, their market share dropped to 10.2 percent from 11.5 percent of all workers in non-government jobs.

• Private-sector union membership peaked in 1970 at 17 million, and reached a record high of 36 percent of all workers in 1953.

• Despite organized labor's aggressive drive to unionize public sector employees, government employee unions at the federal, state and local levels have lost nearly a quarter-million members since 1994.

Unions participated in fewer elections to certify themselves as bargaining agents during the first nine months of 1996 than in the same period of 1995, and lost more of them.

Political observers say that President Clinton could help friendly unions by issuing an executive order permitting federal unions to charge non-members a fee for services rendered -- which would generate huge sums for the unions. But, they say, there is little he can do to shore up unions in the private market.

Source: Leo Troy (Rutgers University), "Unions 'Charge' Into the 21st Century," Wall Street Journal, March 18, 1997.

For more on Unions go to http://www.ncpa.org/pd/unions/unions.html