A Hopeful Year for Unions!

From an editorial in The New York Times

By virtually every indicator, 2007 was a dismal year for American workers. Job growth slowed, unemployment jumped and wages lost what little ground they had gained against inflation since 2003. There is one sliver of good news: the percentage of American workers who belong to a union rose for the first time in three decades...

...There is little doubt that American workers need unions. Wages today are almost 10 percent lower than they were in 1973, after accounting for inflation. The share of national income devoted to workers’ wages and benefits is at its lowest since the late-1960s, while the share going to profits has surged. The decline in unionization has been a big part of the reason that workers have lost so much ground...

...the uptick offers hope that the renewed emphasis on organizing workers by some of the nation’s largest unions — like the service employees’ union, the Teamsters and others that split off from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to form the Change to Win coalition — might start paying dividends despite the difficult odds.

A bill that would have made it easier for unions to organize workers died in the Senate last June. Congress should take up this issue again to stop companies from using threats and other aggressive tactics to keep organized labor out, and to help win workers their rightful share of the economic pie.

View full article here.

I constantly wonder where the public and our country's labor force's outrage is when CEOs consistently walk away with such a higher percentage of the profits than do the labor force. I completely agree with analysts when they attribute this to union busting and the decline in union membership. Another contributing factor is how our country's CEOs have been transformed from the bosses into media icons. They are praised rather than criticized for their high incomes and their lavish lifestyles. We have been "convinced" that the outright disparities between the workers and the bosses is okay.

As noted by economist, teacher and author Paul Krugman whose most recent book, The Conscience of a Liberal, "the percentage of workers in unions declined from a high of 35 percent in the mid-1950s to today’s level of 12 percent. As a result, the United States has 'lost something that’s essential to maintain a decent society.' Krugman attributes the nation’s worsening economic inequality in large part to declining unionization and the erosion of legal protection of workers’ freedom to choose unions and bargain...
...Krugman explained that when a high percentage of workers are in unions and workers’ freedom to choose unions is protected, there is an “umbrella” effect in which all workers, union and nonunion, benefit."