WHO IS UNIONIZED in the United States? Where do union mem-
bers work? What kinds of jobs do they hold?

Who are the unions? What are the activities of different levels of
union organization? How important are the AFL-CIO, national un-
ions, and local unions in collective bargaining? What are the important
management and government organizations in the labor sector?

Before evaluating what unions do, we must understand the structure
of the labor movement, the interaction of management with worker
organizations, and the involvement of government in private-sector
industrial relations.

About one out of every five private-sector wage and salaried workers is
unionized. However, as table 2-1 indicates, this fifth does not reflect
a random draw from the workforce; some types of workers are highly
unionized, while others are scarcely organized at all. In particular, the
probability that a worker will be a union member is greater if that
worker is male, nonwhite, over twenty-five years old, with no formal
schooling beyond high school, living outside the south, and employed

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