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Protesters fill the area in front of the Capitol at the Michigan Right to Work protest in December outside the State Capitol.

( J. Scott Park | Mlive.com)

LANSING, MI — Michigan union membership fell sharply in 2014, the first full year under the state’s new right-to-work law.

Overall, 14.5 percent of wage and salary workers in Michigan were members of a union in 2014, down from 16.3 percent in 2013, according to federal statistics released Friday.

Union membership dropped from approximately 633,000 Michigan workers in 2013 to 585,000 in 2014 even as the total state employment numbers grew.

The number of workers represented by a union, including those who weren’t members themselves, also declined from 656,000 to 631,000 in 2014, dropping from 16.9 percent to 15.7 percent.

Michigan’s right-to-work law, which prohibits new contracts from requiring union dues as a condition of employment, was approved by lawmakers amidst mass Capitol protests in 2012 and took effect in March of 2013.

The law did not appear to have a major impact on union numbers last year, but the 2014 data suggest that more workers have begun to opt out of membership.

Michelle Kaminski, an associate professor of labor relations at Michigan State University, said the full impact of the right-to-work law will reveal itself over time as older employment contracts expire.

“Contracts range in how long they last, but it’s typically about three years,” said Kaminski. “We weren’t really expecting to see an immediate effect, but one that would be phased in over a number of years.”

Kaminski said a separate law that prohibits school districts from deducting union dues from teachers' paychecks likely played a large role in declining membership numbers as well.

“Unionization is stronger in the public sector and particularly strong in education,” said Kaminski, who pointed to possible political motivations for the laws. “Opponents are attacking unions at their core.”

Nationally, union membership has dropped significantly over the past three decades, dropping from 20.1 percent of workers in 1983 to 11.1 percent last year.

Michigan dropped out of the top ten states for union membership in 2014. It's 14.5 percent rate ranked 11th in the country but was still well above the national average.

The Michigan Freedom Fund, a conservative group that pushed for the right-to-work legislation, celebrated the new union numbers.

"As Michigan workers become aware of their rights, more and more are choosing freedom, opting out of their unions, and keeping dues money in their families’ bank accounts, not their union bosses’," MFF President Greg McNeilly said in a statement.

New York, with a 24.6 percent membership rate, was the most unionized state in 2014. Four states — North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and Utah — had union rates below four percent.

Among full-time wage and salary workers, union members across the country earned a median of $970 a week in 2014, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while non-unionized workers earned $763.

“In addition to coverage by a collective bargaining agreement, this earnings difference reflects a variety of influences, including variations in the distributions of union members and nonunion employees by occupation, industry, age, firm size, or geographic region,” according to a BLS release.

Jonathan Oosting is a Capitol reporter for MLive Media Group. Email him, find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.