Fatima Hussein

fhussein@enquirer.com

In a dark and musty tunnel serving as a path for construction work underneath Music Hall, Ed Henry measures pipe that is set to be installed in the building.

Henry is a member of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 392, under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO. The association of which Henry is a part of has as storied a history as the building he works so diligently to restore.

“My father was in a union and his father before that,” the 59-year-old said. He has about 30 years of experience as a pipefitter under his belt.

As a tiny bulldozer whizzes by, Henry pulls his hardhat closer to his eyes, to fight the dust kicked up from the machine.

Henry is a member of a slowing declining group of workers who are active affiliates of an American labor union. He is one of a dying breed.

Between 2005 and 2015, union membership has declined in Ohio from 16 percent of the state's working population to 12.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That is an almost 22 percent decline from 866,000 unionized Ohio workers in 2005 to 670,000 workers in 2015.

The recent declines mirror a longer trend.

Between 1979 and 2013, the share of private sector workers in a union nationally fell from 34 percent to 11 percent among men, and from 16 percent to 6 percent among women, according to the Economic Policy Insititute, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.

Bill Froehle, president of the area AFL-CIO, says unions largely lost members during the Great Recession when droves of workers left the building trades as work dried up.

He says that the decline of unions will usher in a period of increased worker abuses and wage stagnation. Others say unions are outdated, corrupt and cause unnecessary increases to the cost of doing business.

Are wages stagnant because of union declines?

Some experts argue the erosion of unions detrimentally affects the wages of both union and nonunion workers, and is the largest single factor underlying wage stagnation and wage inequality.

In what he calls the first broad study on the topic, Jake Rosenfeld, professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that nonunion men lacking a college degree would have earned 8 percent, or $3,016 annually, more in 2013 if unions had remained as strong as they were in 1979.

"Americans without bachelor's degree comprise the vast majority of the U.S. population, and the core takeaway from this study is that union decline has cost non-union workers billions," Rosenfeld told the Economic Policy Institute in a phone interview last Tuesday.

Rosenfeld, who has written several books correlating wages to union growth, insists union decline is "the top culprit when it comes to economic standing."

Some argue that not all unions command wage increases for workers.

"Unions and their effects are heterogeneous," write David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2003. "Taking wages alone, they operate very differently across individuals, states and industries," so all unions actually generate raises for workers.

Jennifer Laird, a researcher at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, argues that "wages would be 2 to 3 percent higher for women and women workers would benefit a great deal" from increased unionization.

Researchers at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argue that a majority of unionized workers have no say in who represents them at the collective bargaining table.

Only 6 percent of current workers represented by unions under the National Labor Relations Act voted for the union that represents them, according to a recent study conducted by James Sherk, a researcher at the foundation.

This happens because unions do not have to periodically stand for re-election, can win elections with support from less than a majority of workers, often pressure employers into foregoing secret-ballot elections, and because it is difficult for workers to request a decertification vote.

As a result, corruption is one of the downsides to labor unions. For example, the Ohio Conference of Teamsters has recently been beset by a scandal that exposed a near half century of corruption, embezzlement and other charges.

Leading Ohio Teamster official quits; faces discipline, possible charges

Froehle, in the cave underneath Music Hall, put it into metaphor.

“You have a bushel of apples. If one of those apples is bad, it doesn’t necessarily mean all the apples are bad,” Froehle said. He said labor unions have fought hard for the rights of area nonunion employees.

Recent wage theft and $15 per hour initiatives were passed by Cincinnati’s city council under the purview of local labor unions, including Froehle’s.

Froehle and Henry, who are at this point covered in dust, talk about the many benefits they have seen from being in a union.

Froehle said, "It's a matter of getting the word out. We've historically not been very good at that."