Aug 12, 2010 in AFL-CIO Updates, Butler County United Labor Council News by Donna

900,000 working men and women in Pennsylvania are represented by 51 International Unions, with 1,422 Locals in all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties.

Much of the work of organized labor in Pennsylvania is conducted and coordinated by 34 regional Central Labor Councils (CLCs) accross the state.

Pennsylvania’s Manufacturing Crisis

Since 2000 Pennsylvania has lost about 180,000 manufacturing jobs. Because manufacturing jobs have often been among the best paying jobs in the state, the impact of this job loss on communities across the the sate has been significant.

The Pennsylvania economy is generating new jobs, but at one of the slowest rates in the nation and in spite of recent business tax cuts.

According to data from the Keystone Research Center, Pennsylvania’s newer jobs are not paying as much as the jobs the state is losing.

Since the beginning of the recession in Pennsylvania (March 2001), sectors with lower wages have added jobs and sectors with higher wages have lost jobs. The nonagricultural industries whose wages exceeded the statewide average annual wage in 2002 lost a total of 5.3 percent of their jobs. Sectors where wages were below the statewide average increased their employment by 2.9 percent.

Every year the Keystone Research Center issues a comprehensive report on the state of working Pennsylvania that pays close attention to conditions that bear directly on the quality of life for the Commonwealth’s working families.

For more information on the state of the Pennsylvania economy, visit The State of Working Pennsylvania Web site:www.stateofworkingpa.com

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