Estimates of Nonunion Employee Representation in the United States and Canada: How Different Are the Two Countries?

There is a general awareness that, with the exception of the Scandinavian countries and a few others, the percentage of employees who belong to unions has been declining worldwide. The International Labour Organization (ILO), for example, in its World Labour Report 1997–98, estimates that worldwide trade union membership dropped sharply during the past decade. Membership declined in seventy-two of the ninety-two countries surveyed. In forty-eight of them union density dropped below the 20 percent level between 1985 and 1995.