[Excerpt] The free fall of union membership in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. private sector was checked by unionization in the public sector. In many ways the growth of public-sector employment both masked the dramatic decline of private-sector unionization and prevented the wholesale hemorrhaging of the labor movement. Although government workers comprise only 16 percent of the current workforce, workers covered by collective bargaining in the public sector currently make up approximately one-third of the membership of the AFL-CIO.