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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Oregon Union Numbers Continue Their Decline

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Monday, January 29, 2007   

Union membership, in Oregon and the rest of the nation, continues to drop. New numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show union members make up only 12 percent of the nation's workforce. Sheet metal worker and union organizer Willy Meyers says that's bad news for all Oregon workers, because unions set higher standards for workers' rights, benefits and wages.

"Unions float all boats. If the majority of the work in the area is done union, then the union wage prevails. If the majority is done non-union, then it's an average between the union rate and non-union rate, which is almost always lower."

The decline comes at the same time organized labor is asking Congress to consider the "Employee Free Choice Act," which would make it easier to form a union and impose additional penalties on employers who violate labor laws. Local unions also are pushing the Oregon Legislature to pass similar legislation this session. Critics say these bills would deprive individual workers of their privacy, but Meyers says the overall protection is necessary.

"The owners spend a lot more money sometimes on union-busting than what it would cost them to sit down and actually negotiate a raise for their employees."

Meyers feels the decline in union membership is due in part to job outsourcing, as well as to big business' union-busting practices.

The statistics can be found online at www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.toc.htm.


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