What is driving the healthcare debate? The union connection

James Sherk, Union Contracts of Health Care Workers Would Inflate Health Care Costs, Heritage Foundation (2009.11.05):

A government takeover of the health care industry would facilitate widespread union organizing of health care workers . . . Union membership in the private sector has dropped sharply — from 24 percent to 8 percent — over the past generation.[3] Union membership has fallen because unions put the companies they organize at a competitive disadvantage. . . . Unions strongly support a “public plan” that would lead to a government-run single-payer system. In fact, after opponents protested at town hall meetings this summer, the AFL-CIO spent $15 million to stage counter-demonstrations with union members.

Union membership has stayed high in one sector of the economy: the government. Twenty-three percent of public-sector workers belonged to unions in 1974, and 37 percent did in 2008.[8] Union density is five times higher in the public sector than the private sector because the government does not face competition or go bankrupt.[9] So public-sector unions can demand generous concessions without costing their members their jobs, which makes government workers more inclined to unionize . . .