Marriage of State and Union

The Heritage Foundation crunches the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics info on unions in the US.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that a majority of American union members now work for the government. The pattern of unions adding members in government while losing members in the private sector accelerated during the recession. The typical union member now works in the Post Office, not on the assembly line.

 In fact 3 times the number of union workers are postal employees vs. auto workers.  

The average worker for a state or local government earns $39.83 an hour in wages and benefits compared to $27.49 an hour in the private sector.

 All of this leads to unions being HUGE supporters of bigger government and higher taxes to increase their share of the job market and union membership.  AND this is unsustainable when union membership gets you a free pass from Congressional tax increases because the union members are right there while the regulations and taxes are being written and the rest of us are at work trying to pay for it all. And it perpetuates a vicious and ugly cycle. The larger government gets the higher the taxes, which makes it harder on private business so they have to lay off employees, the less  private sector workers have to take care of their families the more they end up depending upon government the larger government gets...eventually we will run out of other people's money. This sort of relationship used to be called a conflict of interest. Now's it just par for the course.
If you want to keep more money in your family budget, it's even more important to look for the 'union label'.