The number of city employees ditching their labor union has doubled in recent years after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for workers to opt out of paying dues, a new report has found.
The analysis by The City, a news non-profit, found that the number of employees getting their dues deducted from their paychecks fell by nearly 8 percent between 2018 and 2022 — a rate that outpaced the overall 5.1% decline in the city workforce over the same time period.
That’s double the 3.5% drop reported by the Independent Budget Office in January 2019, just a few months after the 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court’s conservative justices gutted a previous decision that effectively required employees covered by a union contract to chip in.
The Police Benevolent Association saw its membership decline by 3,100 people, even though the number of cops shrank by just 1,300. The union that represents corrections officers saw its membership plunge by an astonishing 40%, according to an analysis by investigative news non-profit The City.
Both the PBA and the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association disputed the compiled tallies, claiming that virtually every beat cop and every jail guard carry union membership.
Overall, The City calculated that union membership among municipal employees had dropped nearly 8 percent, even as the city work force had shrank by just 5.1 percent.
The nonprofit said it compared the number of city employees having union dues deducted from their paychecks using data collected by the city’s Independent Budget Office against the total number hired in those job functions.
It added that it was unable to determine how well the city’s biggest municipal labor union, District Council 37, had fared because the union represents so many different classifications across the Big Apple’s work force.
The union that represents professors, staff and part-time instructors at the City University of New York system saw its membership plunge from 61% of eligible employees to just 51%, The City found — a finding the union confirmed.
The Professional Staff Congress blamed the shrinkage on the high rates of turnover in the part-time teaching staff.
The number crunch comes five years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2018 that barred requiring employees to pay union dues if their job was covered by a negotiated labor contract.
The 2019 report from the IBO revealed that in the first several months after the ruling that 11,000 city workers had decided to ditch paying their dues.
The city workforce has roughly 330,000 employees, not counting those who work for the city Housing Authority and the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which keep their own sets of books.