FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL RESOURCES OF 9 MAJOR PUBLIC-SECTOR UNIONS IN THE 1980S

Current research offers two potentially competing perspectives on unio n strength. membership and financial/political resources. We update an d broaden the research on the financial and political resources of nin e major public sector unions in the U.S. by reporting these unions' fi nancial assets, net worth, revenues, and political action committee (P AC) receipts during the 1980s and the early 1990s. We find that unions may expand their financial and political resources even though member ship levels stagnate or decline. Overall, the unions have amassed larg er asset bases, even though some have actually lost members. On a per member basis, federal executive branch unions do not appear as financi ally weak as the level of their financial resources suggests. Postal u nions as a group are clearly the strongest in terms of per member fina ncial and political resources. Federal executive branch unions have ex perienced a striking reduction in their PAC activity while the postal and the state and local union PACs have grown substantially. Our analy sis indicates that union membership may not adequately measure union s trength.