As a life-long member of the Working Class, I have been troubled for
many years over the decline of labor unions.
To some degree unions have helped their own decline, but even if they
had made better use of their money and involvements, they would have
been under attack by the Corporate First Class Organized Billionaires.
It used to be that citizens would gather for community meetings to
discuss the issues effecting them. Town meetings were as common as
were the neighborhood churches. But it is more than unions that are
on the decline. Those neighborhood churches are losing attendance,
and many have closed their doors or merged with other churches.
Lions, Eagles, Masons, Rotary, Knights of Columbus, all are watching
their memberships dwindle and those still involved are becoming old
and unable to participate at former levels.
So where do people still gather in large numbers? Sporting events
seem to have success in pulling folks together. Of course these
collections of people are not set up for participation. They are
strictly spectator events.
This lack of involvement is no accident. Even before our individual
electronic gadgets that isolate us, physically, from one another while
giving the impression that we are connected, even so we have been
conditioned over many years to think of ourselves as being the center
of the universe.
The rugged individual. The self made man/woman. As I've said before,
even our heroes are loners. Superman, the Lone Ranger, Batman, Davey
Crockett, Daniel Boone, all are self contained strong men. And how
can we be so surprised when we come to a place where one of our
candidates for the nation's highest office is Donald Trump? Isn't
Donald Trump the culmination of our efforts to become that self-made
billionaire?
It is long past time for us to begin talking up the idea of strength
in collective bargaining. The Fairy Tales about rags to riches are
opiates designed to dull our natural instincts to unite in self
preservation.
Strong organizations call for participation, not sitting in the
stands. Designing and building a better way of life should be far
more exciting and challenging than being hunched over some pointless
game.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/30/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How the Decline in Union Membership Is Hurting All of Us: Report
Published on
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
by
Common Dreams
How the Decline in Union Membership Is Hurting All of Us: Report
'Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool
available for fueling wage growth and ending the era of persistent wage
stagnation'
by
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer
At a Verizon strike earlier this year. (Photo: Thomas Altfather
Good/flickr/cc)
The decline of organized labor in the United States has contributed
significantly to wage stagnation and rising inequality, according to a new
report released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
"Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool
available for fueling wage growth for both low- and middle-wage workers and
ending the era of persistent wage stagnation."
-Economic Policy Institute
The analysis finds that as the share of private-sector workers in a union
has fallen precipitously-from one in three in the 1950s to about one in 20
today-wage inequality has risen as a result. In particular, EPI states that
the labor movement's decline has contributed to wage losses among workers
who don't even belong to a union, which "translates into millions of lost
dollars to American workers."
"Union decline has exacerbated wage inequality in the United States by
dampening the pay of non-union workers as well as by eroding the share of
workers directly benefiting from unionization," reads the EPI report.
"Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool
available for fueling wage growth for both low- and middle-wage workers and
ending the era of persistent wage stagnation."
The paper notes that several culprits have been blamed for the fact that
pay
for private-sector workers has "barely budged over the past three and a
half
decades"-including globalization, technological change, and the slowdown in
Americans' educational attainment.
"Each of these accounts describes important developments contributing to
pay
stagnation and pay decline for certain groups of workers," EPI
acknowledges.
"Yet these explanations ignore a vital contributing factor: the near
disappearance of a worker institution that once claimed over one-third of
private-sector employees as members."
That is, unions.
In fact, the think tank found that if union membership rates were as high
today as they were in 1979, men who aren't in a union would make five
percent, or about $2,700 more, per year. For less educated men, the decline
is even more impactful; non-union men without a bachelor's degree would
have
made $3,016 more in 2013―an 8 percent increase―under 1979 levels of union
membership.
(The report notes that the impact for women is "not as substantial because
women were not as unionized as men were in 1979"-but nor is it
inconsequential: For 32.9 million full-time non-union women working in the
private sector, annual pay would be roughly $24.0 billion more per year if
unions had remained as strong as they were in 1979.)
"In the year of a presidential election characterized by populist
discontent, the report's findings are fresh ammunition for progressives who
maintain that strengthening unions, rather than, say, closing our borders
to
immigrants, is the key to restoring broad wage growth and stemming income
inequality," reporter Daniel Marens wrote at the Huffington Post.
"Many American workers can see those unions as either minor bit players in
today's economy or good for union members alone to the detriment of society
at large," study co-author Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington
University in St. Louis, told the HuffPo. "This is a study that says that's
wrong: unions are good for members and non-members alike."
Indeed, as Hamilton Nolan wrote in his analysis of the EPI report at
Deadspin: "Don't get mad at foreigners. Unionize. It's the only battle in
the class war that lies entirely within your power to win."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
Skip to main content
//
. DONATE
. SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
. Home
. World
. U.S.
. Canada
. Climate
. War & Peace
. Economy
. Rights
. Solutions
. Our Revolution
. Bernie Sanders
. Hillary Clinton
. Jill Stein
. Donald Trump
How the Decline in Union Membership Is Hurting All of Us: Report
Published on
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
by
Common Dreams
How the Decline in Union Membership Is Hurting All of Us: Report
'Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool
available for fueling wage growth and ending the era of persistent wage
stagnation'
by
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer
. 42 Comments
. At a Verizon strike earlier this year. (Photo: Thomas Altfather
Good/flickr/cc)
. The decline of organized labor in the United States has contributed
significantly to wage stagnation and rising inequality, according to a new
report released Tuesday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
. "Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool
available for fueling wage growth for both low- and middle-wage workers and
ending the era of persistent wage stagnation."
-Economic Policy Institute
. The analysis finds that as the share of private-sector workers in a
union has fallen precipitously-from one in three in the 1950s to about one
in 20 today-wage inequality has risen as a result. In particular, EPI
states
that the labor movement's decline has contributed to wage losses among
workers who don't even belong to a union, which "translates into millions
of
lost dollars to American workers."
. "Union decline has exacerbated wage inequality in the United States
by dampening the pay of non-union workers as well as by eroding the share
of
workers directly benefiting from unionization," reads the EPI report.
"Rebuilding our system of collective bargaining is an important tool
available for fueling wage growth for both low- and middle-wage workers and
ending the era of persistent wage stagnation."
.
http://commondreams.org/because-you-we-have-chancehttp://commondreams.org/be
cause-you-we-have-chance
The paper notes that several culprits have been blamed for the fact that
pay
for private-sector workers has "barely budged over the past three and a
half
decades"-including globalization, technological change, and the slowdown in
Americans' educational attainment.
"Each of these accounts describes important developments contributing to
pay
stagnation and pay decline for certain groups of workers," EPI
acknowledges.
"Yet these explanations ignore a vital contributing factor: the near
disappearance of a worker institution that once claimed over one-third of
private-sector employees as members."
That is, unions.
In fact, the think tank found that if union membership rates were as high
today as they were in 1979, men who aren't in a union would make five
percent, or about $2,700 more, per year. For less educated men, the decline
is even more impactful; non-union men without a bachelor's degree would
have
made $3,016 more in 2013―an 8 percent increase―under 1979 levels of union
membership.
(The report notes that the impact for women is "not as substantial because
women were not as unionized as men were in 1979"-but nor is it
inconsequential: For 32.9 million full-time non-union women working in the
private sector, annual pay would be roughly $24.0 billion more per year if
unions had remained as strong as they were in 1979.)
"In the year of a presidential election characterized by populist
discontent, the report's findings are fresh ammunition for progressives who
maintain that strengthening unions, rather than, say, closing our borders
to
immigrants, is the key to restoring broad wage growth and stemming income
inequality," reporter Daniel Marens wrote at the Huffington Post.
"Many American workers can see those unions as either minor bit players in
today's economy or good for union members alone to the detriment of society
at large," study co-author Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington
University in St. Louis, told the HuffPo. "This is a study that says that's
wrong: unions are good for members and non-members alike."
Indeed, as Hamilton Nolan wrote in his analysis of the EPI report at
Deadspin: "Don't get mad at foreigners. Unionize. It's the only battle in
the class war that lies entirely within your power to win."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
