AFL-CIO – RI Future

April 3, 2016April 4, 2016

What does Wisconsin want?

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The Democratic Primary in Wisconsin has a lot on the line ideologically, and it could reverberate East.

After Sanders swept six of the last seven contests, by a margins averaging about 75 percent, the contest moves into Wisconsin where progressivism and the unionism face a historic ideological challenge. Will Wisconsin vote for the principles of political revolution they were founded on or will they default to neoliberal pragmatism?

Laborers or labor unions

A little discussed fact is that it is the unions and their members have been the major contributors to Bernie Sanders campaign. Most notably are the Machinist Union, Teamsters Union, National Education Association, United Auto Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, not to mention the US Postal Service and the Laborers Union.

However, there is a schism. Unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which was central in the fight with Governor Walker on the right to organize, endorsed the reformist darling of the Democratic Party establishment Hillary Clinton. Since Sanders seems more popular with the membership than the leadership, it is not clear how this will translate into votes. The AFL-CIO, the largest national union, has declined to endorse either candidate.

Which labor movement will show up? The one who fights for workers rights or the one who believes they already have a seat at the table that it could lose?

Independent voters

Wisconsin has an open primary and at this point it looks like the blue collar workers will largely support Sanders and not be tempted to cross over to Trump like they did in Ohio. Though Trump has also has taken an anti-NAFTA position, it is Bernie Sanders who has clearly articulated a pro-worker vision from the $15 minimum wage to a pledge to rewrite all of the so-called free-trade agreements. It is Sanders appeal with independents that his campaign bases there claim that he is the stronger candidate in the general election and they may break his way on Tuesday.

Wisconsin’s progressive roots

And then there is the question of ideology. There’s been much discussion in this campaign about progressivism. After Bernie Sanders laid out a clear progressive, social democrat platform, Hillary Clinton claimed that she was “a progressive who can get things done.” This was particularly startling since Hillary, a household name, has been practicing triangulation and transactional politics which was started by her husband Bill Clinton through her career. Clintonism, which has dominated the Democrats ideology for decades, claimed that by moving the discussion to the middle, the Democrats could get the Republicans to compromise. What happened, which is what many on the left predicted, is that this tactic pulled the whole party to the right.

Wisconsin should know what the term means. The Progressive Movement was founded there by Bob La Follette, who is known as “Fighting Bob.” At the age of 64, the former governor and staunch supporter of Socialist Eugene V Debs, ran for president largely on an anti-corruption platform, demanded investigations into the war profiteering and corrupt monopolies, and that the big banks be broken up. His platform called for taking over the railroads and private utilities, calling for child labor laws, the right to organize and increasing civil liberties ending racism.

He campaigned for the presidency on a pledge to “break the combined power of the private monopoly system over the political and economic life of the American people” and denouncing, in the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan’s resurgence, “any discrimination between races, classes, and creeds.”

This laid the groundwork for the Progressive Party of Wisconsin which influenced Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, and was carried on by his son establishing the progressive platform as core values in progressive politics for decades.

Bernie for Wisconsin

What is on the line Tuesday is whether Wisconsin stays true to its progressive roots, or if after years of being clobbered by the Koch brothers, it takes on the mantle of neoliberal centrism. Its progressive roots still live on, at least, at the an annual event called the Fighting Bob Fest where, in October 2014, Bernie Sanders spoke on his familiar topic- Democracy or Oligarchy. You can read the full speech here – or watch the video.

After eviscerating the Koch brothers and the racist right wing fringe, pillars of power in the Republican Party, Sanders lays out the Progressive Platform that he is currently campaigning on – demanding campaign finance reform, breaking up the banks, single-payer health care and strengthening the safety net with a passionate plea for social, environmental and economic justice.

He said we are in the midst of the greatest crisis since the Civil War.

And this is not an easy fight. They have huge resources. They have think tanks. They have media. You name it, they’ve got it.

But there is one thing they don’t have. While they have unlimited sums of money, what we have is the people.

And if we can overcome some of our differences, we can focus on the broad issues facing America: jobs, health care, education, the environment, the needs of children. And on these issues, believe it or not, we are a united nation.

So let us reach out to our brothers and our sisters, fellow workers, fellow family members, and let us create a movement that tells Washington: We are not asking you, we are telling you.

Change will take place in America not through some backroom negotiations.

Change takes place in America when millions of people demand it.

Wisconsin decides Tuesday if it wants systemic change or the status quo primacy of the 1 percent and Wall Street. The same question faces Rhode Islanders on April 26th.

October 17, 2015October 17, 2015

Price Rite employees picket for the betterment of Price Rite

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Employees of Price Rite, a regional grocery store chain, took to the streets in front of the Providence store on Friday to, in their words, “Change Price Rite for the Better.”

That was the name given to the protest held outside the Valley Street grocery store on Friday that brought national AFL-CIO Secretary Elizabeth Shuler to the Ocean State.

The effort was “part of regional and national efforts to highlight the need for retail companies, like Price Rite, to pay the hard-working men and women better wages, provide better benefits, offer consistent scheduling, and respect on the job,” according to a press release from the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) Local 328 and Rhode Island Jobs for Justice.

There are six Price Rite stores in Rhode Island, according to the company website – in Providence, Pawtucket, Cranston, Warwick, Johnston and Woonsocket, and 60 between Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Each Price Rite “employs anywhere from 75 to 150 associates,” according to its website.

“Price Rite not only hurts employees, families and their communities, but its low wage model hurts everybody in the retail industry,” said UFCW Local 328 President Tim Melia. He was one 75 employees and labor activists marching, holding signs and calling for better benefits and wages on Friday afternoon.

Said Mike Araujo, new executive director of Rhode Island Jobs With Justice: “The unity of RI’s labor movement is a real force, the lines of gender, race, and class are no match for a committed and militant labor movement, the workers at Price Rite have a natural right to dignity, respect, and justice, this show of solidarity says to the bosses: We will fight, and we will win.“

October 27, 2014

Female Republican wins AFL-CIO nod but not NOW’s

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Here’s a riddle that can only be answered if you’ve been paying close attention to the mixed up world of liberal political endorsements this year: Is a Republican woman more likely to win the endorsement of a labor union or a women’s rights organization?

For Catherine Taylor, who is campaigning to be Rhode Island’s next lt. governor, the answer was the AFL-CIO, a labor group that threw its support behind her earlier this month. Today RI-NOW announced it wasn’t endorsing her – even though her victory could help cement a majority of women holding statewide offices.

“While Ms. Taylor shares our commitment to expanding health care access, supporting working families, and addressing the needs and concerns of our state’s aging population (of which women make up the majority), we are not sufficiently aligned to be able to endorse her at this time,” said RI NOW PAC Chair Carolyn Mark. “However, we view Ms. Taylor as a highly qualified candidate who understands the important role the office of Lt. Governor plays in our state, and we have every confidence that she is the type of leader with whom we would be able to work to create positive change for women and families in Rhode Island.”

Taylor’s opponent, Democrat Dan McKee, is a staunch charter school advocate, a concept anathema to teachers and some other AFL-CIO members.

“Catherine’s understanding of the many challenges everyday Rhode Islanders face, along with her established track record of listening to the concerns of her employees while running the Division of Elderly Affairs, makes her the right choice for the office of lieutenant governor,” said AFL-CIO’s Maureen Martin in announcing their endorsement on Oct. 15. “Throughout her long tenure as the director of Elderly Affairs Mrs. Taylor showed compassion and concern not only for seniors, adults with disabilities, and families, but also for the many workers who provided care to some of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable citizens.”

Mark said RI-NOW’s endorsement criteria has a particularly high bar, and a candidate need be with them on 100 percent of issues to win their backing.

“The bottom line for us is she’s a fiscal conservative and a lot of our policies do require more funding,” Mark told me. “She was unable to make any commitments to us that would increase public support.”

As one example, Mark said Taylor does not support an increase in marriage license fees to support domestic violence prevention work. Mark said Taylor agrees more should be done but “she’s not necessarily with us in the way we want to get there.”

April 20, 2014April 21, 2014

Unions are not all the same

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In several recent conversations about the gubernatorial race, people have talked about “the labor vote” going to this candidate or that. We often hear pundits and even reporters talking about “unions” as a monolithic bloc. Like thinking that all RI Democrats are equally liberal, seeing the labor movement as a single unit is deeply flawed.

The world is a complicated place. Many things, even contradictory things, can be true at the same time. Nor is it a zero-sum game. Just because something you like can be supported with evidence does not mean that the things you don’t like cannot. As a rule, everything people say and believe is true…to an extent.

Unions are people, too, my friends

Like people, like the world, unions are a complicated mass of contradictory things. As conservatives claim, it is true that unions can sometimes act to shield incompetent or unproductive workers from scrutiny and accountability. But it is also true that unions can sometimes act to shield good workers from unscrupulous bosses.

In my experience, the latter is true far more often than the former. But for conservatives and their allies in the press, one example of union shenanigans invalidates a mountain of evidence that unions do critical, sometimes life-saving work. This has to end.

(Here, I will contradict myself in that the following is a zero-sum exercise. As I will prove that the union landscape in Rhode Island is complex and varied, I will simultaneously disprove that “labor” is a single, undifferentiated bloc. Deal with it.)

I cite as evidence the union endorsements for gubernatorial candidates in the 2010 election. Also, this will support my long-running assertion that the RI Democratic Party—that is, The Machine—is dominated by highly conservative people to the point that a former Republican was the “liberal” in that race.

The Teamsters union is not a progressive organization, and its members are mostly social conservatives. In 2010, they endorsed Caprio, the Machine’s candidate. Caprio is nobody’s progressive, nobody’s liberal; he is a Democrat in name only. At the PPAC debate, the Teamsters turned out in numbers and set the ugly, partisan tone. Sitting in that highly-charged atmosphere, it was hard not to think of the phrase “union thugs.”

The SEIU is the kind of union that proves we need unions. Service workers—and I was one for about 15 years—are some of the worst abused workers in the country. As a never-was rock star, I spent many years in commercial kitchens. It is dangerous work for bad pay. And bosses and customers frequently fail to distinguish between “service” and “servant”.

In another career, I met a person in the restaurant equipment business. He told me that there is a trade term for restaurant workers: the burn-and-churn. Restaurant owners will consciously try to keep wages low by driving workers to their physical and mental limits, forcing them to quit or commit a fireable offense. Then they replace them from a large pool of unemployed workers and repeat the process.

The SEIU rightly endorsed Chafee. Even though Chafee was then an independent and recent defector from the GOP, he was by far the most liberal candidate. Virtually all progressives supported Chafee. Some, like me, did so openly. Others more integrated into the Democratic Party, could only work in the shadow or drag their feet in support of Caprio.

The AFL-CIO is a coalition of coalitions. It embodies the vast diversity in the labor movement. So it’s telling that the AFL-CIO endorsed…nobody. Because Caprio and Chafee represented such distant political positions and because the AFL-CIO members find themselves equally divided between those two positions, the Grand Coalition could not achieve unanimity of purpose and issue an endorsement. They basically abstained from the campaign.

As goes the union debate, so goes the political debate

To review, the more conservative union backs the more conservative candidate and the more liberal union backs the more liberal candidate. And the broad-based coalition union can’t decide.

This is what diversity looks like. Different people, different groups, different unions are, well, different.

It is unhelpful for people to talk about unions as if they were all the same. Conservatives do it specifically to make good unions look bad, tarring them all with the same brush, as the saying goes.

But members of the press—to whom this post is dedicated—do this because it’s easy. Explaining complex issues is hard and takes a lot of words. Reporters are under deadline, and editors can’t have long stories.

This is unacceptable because it has a real impact on the political discussion in Rhode Island. And Rhode Island desperately needs to have an honest, open discussion about our badly broke political system.

Let’s start by changing the way we talk about the organize labor movement.

April 29, 2013April 29, 2013

Remember Seth Luther

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UPDATE April 29, 2013:

Today is the 150th anniversary of Seth Luther’s death. Since last year’s post, records have been found locating Luther possible final resting place in Brattleboro, Vermont. A WIKI page is in formation, and other plans to follow. Here is a great link to a 1974 essay by on Luther by Carl Gersuny called “Seth Luther – The Road From Chepachet.”

In the week we celebrate the signing of the marriage equality bill, let us remember this great organizer and agitator with what he said so many years ago:

“It is the first duty of an American citizen to hate injustice in all its forms.”

Original Post April 29, 2012:

Today is the anniversary of the death of Seth Luther. He died on April 29, 1863.

Who?

Seth Luther*: Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame inductee; Union Organizer; leader of the Dorr Rebellion and radical of the worst sort. On the weekend that we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence it also seems appropriate to look a little farther back to our roots here in Rhode Island. As the saying goes, the most radical idea in America today is a long memory.

“Peaceably if we can, Forcibly if we must!”

Luther was an itinerant organizer and agitator whose father fought in the American Revolution. He spent time on what was then the American Frontier and Deep South before coming home to try and establish roots and a career as a carpenter. His passion for justice and the rights of the oppressed led him to join the nascent labor movement as a speech maker and organizer.

In a speech he delivered in Boston in 1834, Luther said:

“It is true, a Rhode Island Nabob said, in a public document, ‘The poor must work or starve, and the rich will take care of themselves.’ But I venture to assert, that the rich never did take care of themselves or their property, in peace or war. It is protected by the laboring, the producing class. It is created by the laborer, drawn out of his hands by the means of bad laws and then forsooth he must protect it at the expense of his health, oftentimes of his life, for the benefit of those, who will have nothing to do with the creation of wealth or its protection after it’s created.”

Luther could just as easily be describing the conditions working people face today. In another parallel to the conditions organizers face, then and now. When Luther died, by then a broken man, this was the commentary The Providence Journal added to the notice of his death:

“He was natural radical, dissatisfied with all existing institutions about him, and labored under the not uncommon delusion that it was his special mission to set things right…His ideal of a pure democracy seemed to be that blessed state wherein the idle, the thriftless, and the profligate should enjoy all the fruits of the labor of the industrious, the frugal, and the virtuous. The possessors of property everywhere he looked upon as banded robbers, who he hated as born enemies of the human race. He had considerable talent for both writing and speaking; but he was too violent, willful, and headstrong to accomplish any good. Soon after the troubles of ’42, he became insane, and was sent to the Dexter Asylum, where he remained until 1848, when the Butler Hospital was opened for patients. He was then removed to that institution by the city, where he remained for ten years; thence to Brattleboro where he has just closed his worse than useless life.”

Would you expect anything less?

*Source: Peaceably if we can, Forcibly if we must! Writings by and about Seth Luther. Edited by Scott Molly, Carl Gersuny, and Robert Macieski and published by the Rhode Island Labor History Society, 1998.

February 25, 2013February 25, 2013

George Nee: Real Work Gets Done In The Trenches

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george nee gordon fox — George Nee, president of the AFL-CIO, talks to House Speaker Gordon Fox. (Photo by Bob Plain)

When most Rhode Islanders think of George Nee, president of the 80,000 member Rhode Island AFL-CIO, they probably have images of his speaking at a State House rally to support labor causes or testifying at a legislative hearing to protect worker pensions.

Probably there are some politicians, on both sides of the aisle, who have nightmares of the wrath of George Nee if they don’t support the labor agenda. Few, however, know the full story behind his passion to fight for working people, how he got here, what prompted him to help organize arguably one of the most powerful political forces of any state in the nation, and what’s in store for him in the near future.

George Nee and Cesar Chavez

When I sat down with Nee at the AFL-CIO headquarters on Smith Street (the DMZ for us Republicans), I was taken by the most prominent image in his office, not of photos with Presidents or national leaders (they were indeed there), but with the images of the person who most inspired his mission in life: Cesar Chavez.

george and cesar copy — A younger George Nee with his friend CEsar Chavez, the heroic labor and civil rights leader from California.

Chavez, the civil rights activist and labor leader who co-founded The National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers or UFW), burst upon the national scene when he organized the national grape boycott (which was settled in 1970) and then the 1971 lettuce boycott. Chavez was, and still is, considered one of the” lions” of the labor movement in the United States.

George Nee was a pall bearer at Chavez’s funeral on April 27, 1993. And how he got to be so close to Chavez is a story in itself.

A Boston College student in the late 1960s, George left the comfort of the ivy halls before graduating to earn $5 a week plus room and board to work for the United Farm Workers. His first assignment: go to Rhode Island (with $5 in his pocket and a car with no heater) to help organize the lettuce boycott.

He helped to organize the 1000-man march through the California fruit and vegetable countryside. One night they would stay at a Hollywood actor’s mansion, and the next they would be on a dirt floor with no running water. It was during this period that Nee became close to Chavez, serving as one of personal bodyguards due to the constant occurrence of death threats.

Organizing the Ocean State

teresa pat george — Teresa Tanzi, Pat Crowley and George Nee inspect the House Finance Committee budget proposal in 2012. (Photo by Bob Plain)

The rest of the story can only be described as a man on a mission. He organized jewelry, clerical, and health care workers and his efforts resulted in contracts with over 1,300 workers and 50 union election. He joined the Rhode Island AFL-CIO as its executive director in 1983, became its secretary-treasurer in 1991, and then its president in 2009.

Though union membership nationally is declining, and certainly the percentage of union membership in Rhode Island has been decreasing, Rhode Island is still one of the states with the highest union density in the nation.

“Lack of enforcement of the rights of unions to organize, technology diminishing the workforce, trade, and tax policy,” he cited as some of the reasons for the drop in membership.

Nonetheless, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO has been more active than ever in its social and political agenda. That agenda is both applauded and loathed, depending on what side you are on.

2013 Legislative Agenda

A fast overview of what’s on his plate for 2013:

An increase in the state minimum wage. Rhode Island’s minimum wages is now $7.75 per hour, while Massachusetts’ is $8.05 and Connecticut’s is at $8.35,”
A restoration of the historic tax credit, with a stipulation for a prevailing wage mechanism to be attached, and
Probably one of the most contentious initiatives, the fight for binding arbitration for school teachers. According to Mr. Nee, “It’s time to end the politics in teachers’ contracts.”

gordon fox george nee — George Nee and Gordon Fox get reacquainted with each other on election night. (Photo by Bob Plain)

With this busy legislative agenda, coupled with his ongoing fight against some aspects of pension reform, George Nee has not lost his passion for the labor movement and the rights of all workers. Sharp, articulate, and extremely grounded, he sees no other place where he’d rather be (he laughed when I said that I heard a rumor that he was considering a gubernatorial run) working.

“I like the trenches,” he said. “That’s where the real work gets done.”

He’s met with presidents of the United States, but he is just as impressed with the handshake of a laborer in the Union Hall. To know George Nee is to know his proudest moment was having carried the casket of his friend and inspiration on that April day in 1993 in California, when world leaders and 50,000 regular people gathered to lay Cesar Chavez in his final resting place. George Nee at his side.

This story originally appeared in the Rhode Island Echo.

May 4, 2012May 4, 2012

Union Objects to Taxes Funding ALEC Costs

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Writing on behalf of the 80,000 members of the AFL-CIO, union leaders George Nee and Maureen Martin sent a letter to every member of the legislature asking that ALEC memberships not be funded with taxpayer money.

“If the views and priorities of ALEC align with your personal beliefs, then by all means remain a member,” they wrote in the letter. “We only ask that the Rhode Island taxpayer not be responsible for paying your membership dues to a right-wing, business backed lobbying group, just as no one would ask the taxpayer to be responsible for paying any members dues to liberal organizations such as Ocean State Action, Emily’s List, or MoveOn.org.”

The state paid $2,300 for 23 legislators’ memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a far right wing group that pairs together paid corporate interests and conservative legislators to draft model legislation used in states across the country. While the expenditure is relatively small, many consider what ALEC does to be lobbying, and thus shouldn’t be subsidized by taxpayers.

“ALEC is clearly not a nonpartisan organization,” Martin and Nee wrote to legislators. “Ninety-eight percent of ALEC’s funding comes from corporate and special interest group donors such as BP, Verizon, the Koch brother’s, Wal-Mart, the National Right-to-Work Committee, the NRA, the Heritage Foundation, the United States Chamber of Commerce, among many others.”

Memberships to such organizations are approved by the powerful Joint Committee on Legislative Services – made up of House Speaker Gordon Fox, Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, House Majority Leader Nicholas Mattiello, House Minority Leader Brian Newbury and Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere.

Fox, the chairman of the committee, told me he doesn’t see a problem with taxpayers paying for ALEC memberships, likening it to memberships in the National Conference of State Legislators.

“I just treat ALEC as I treat the NCSL and NCSG [National Conference of State Governments],” Fox said. “Yes they have a more conservative bent from some of the other ones. But there are members up here who are conservative and want to belong to something that’s a little more conservative.”

The NCSL and NCSG are non-partisan organizations that offer research and networking opportunities to state governments. Every state legislator in the country belongs to the NCSL. ALEC, on the other hand, exists to promote corporate interests and its legislative members are almost always conservatives.

Fox said taxpayers have been funding ALEC memberships for as long as his memory serves. While he didn’t rule out revisiting their funding, he wouldn’t commit to doing so either, saying, “I’m really looking at the budget right now but in my spare time i’ll look into that too.”

Recently, ALEC has been in the news for sponsoring, then distancing itself from, the Stand Your Ground law in Florida that almost allowed Trayvon Martin’s killer to avoid trial. Separately, Common Cause has filed a complaint with the IRS saying the group is evading taxes by not registering as a lobby organization. Critics claim ALEC is an example of how corporate America has an unfair advantage in the political process. While ALEC is known for its regressive tax policies that favor big business, it has also aligned itself with the NRA and the religious right in the past.

Locally, ALEC has been making headlines because Rep. Jon Brien, a conservative Democrat from Woonsocket, was recently named to the group’s board of director. Subsequently, it was learned that one in five state legislators are members – though some current and former members say they don’t know how they became members. Phil Marcello, of the Providence Journal, then reported that ALEC memberships are paid for with taxpayer dollars. Since then, two Democratic state Senators, John Tassoni and Walter Felag, have renounced their memberships.

April 10, 2012April 10, 2012

RI Progress Report: Romney in RI and Wildfire Warnings

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Mitt Romney will make his second campaign stop in the Ocean State today. The GOP presidential hopeful will be at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick for what his campaign calls a Small Business Town Hall. The last time Romney was in Rhode Island he held a fundraiser at a Newport mansion, where the millionaire famous for being out of touch no doubt felt more at home than he will at a hotel in Warwick.

Meanwhile, yesterday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, business owners disagreed with the congressional delegation on the reasons for RI’s high unemployment rate.

Not the AFL-CIO, though, which endorsed the three Democrats running for re-election to Congress this year.

I thought we only got springtime wildfire warnings in the West? Not only is it a particularly dry year here in Rhode Island, it’s also the warmest year on record.

Speaking of putting out fires … Ozzie Guillen, the new manager of the Miami Marlins, displays how NOT to ingratiate oneself to baseball fans in Florida by praising Fidel Castro.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation becomes the latest organization to sever ties with ALEC, the business (and, evidently, non-profit)-backed political powerhouse that authors right-wing model legislation for state legislatures.

Need a free bike? Head to South County on Saturday for the Bicycle Recycle, part of Bike Day in South Kingstown.

Gov. Chafee tells the Johnston City Council that the state didn’t do enough over the past three years to help struggling cities.

This page may be updated throughout the day. Click HERE for an archive of the RI Progress Report.

August 5, 2011January 21, 2012

Libertarian Fairy Dust: AKA Its Only Class War When Workers Fight Back

Two interesting things of note. First, this gragh from the AFL-CIO:

Then this story from the NYTIMES by Steven Greenhouse:

Labor’s Decline and Wage Inequality
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The decline in organized labor’s power and membership has played a larger role in fostering increased wage inequality in the United States than is generally thought, according to a study published in the American Sociological Review this month.
The study, “Unions, Norms and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality,” found that the decline in union power and density since 1973 explained a third of the increase in wage inequality among men since then, and a fifth of the increased inequality among women.
The study noted that from 1973 to 2007, union membership in the private sector dropped to 8 percent from 34 percent among men and to 6 percent from 16 percent among women. During that time, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent, the study found.
While many academics argue that increased inequality in educational attainment has played a major role in expanding wage inequality, the new study reaches a surprising conclusion, saying, “The decline of the U.S. labor movement has added as much to men’s wage inequality as has the relative increase in pay for college graduates.” The study adds that “union decline contributes just half as much as education to the overall rise in women’s wage inequality.”
The study was written by Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, and Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at the University of Washington.
The two professors found that the decline of organized labor held down wages in union and nonunion workplaces alike. Many nonunion employers — especially decades ago, when unions represented more than 30 percent of the private sector work force — raised wages to help avert the threat of union organizing.
Moreover, the study argues that when unions were larger and had a far greater voice in politics and society, they played a more influential role in advocacy on wages across the economy, for instance, in pushing to raise the minimum wage.
“In the early 1970s, when one in three male workers were organized, unions were often prominent voices for equity, not just for their members, but for all workers,” the two professors wrote. “Union decline marks an erosion of the moral economy and its underlying distributional norms. Wage inequality in the nonunion sector increased as a result.”
The two professors note that the decline of unions is part of a common account of rising inequality that is often contrasted with a market explanation that includes technological change, immigration and foreign trade. They argue that the market explanation usually understates the role of organized labor’s decline on increased inequality.
The study notes that in the 1970s, some skilled-trades unions and construction unions helped to increased inequality through exclusionary practices that reinforced racial and ethnic inequalities. But the study said that, over all, unions in the United States had been an important force for reducing inequality — although not as much as unions in Europe, which have more influence in politics and society.
The authors found that the biggest factor in the decline in unions’ power and density was job growth outside traditional labor strongholds like manufacturing, construction and transportation. They added that another important reason for the decline of organized labor was that “employers in unionized industries intensified their opposition” to unionization efforts.
They noted that as unions have grown weaker, there has been less pressure on lawmakers to enact labor-friendly or worker-friendly measures. “As organized labor’s political power dissipates,” the authors wrote, “economic interests in the labor market are dispersed and policy makers have fewer incentives to strengthen unions or otherwise equalize economic rewards.”

Now to answer “Moderate’s” question yesterday as for solutions. To start with: I would confiscate Ken Block’s fortune and start a WPA 2.0. To start..