The rising tide was supposed to lift all boats. It didn’t.
Corporations and very rich individuals got a big tax break a year ago. The unemployment rate is very low.
But most workers did not get a raise.
In education, many teachers have not see a raise for years.
It seems that all the benefits of economic growth have gone to the wealthiest.
One reason: The decline of unions.
When corporations have a great year, unions fight for higher wages.
In the absence of unions, workers have no voice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It by far, the biggest reason. Unions even drive up wages in non union shops in a competition for labor.
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bingo
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The United States is being uberized. It’s falling for Scamazon. Union suppression is the the biggest reason for across the board wage suppression, and also for the disappearance of pensions. Don’t forget about pensions and healthcare, folks. As I prepare to go on strike for the first time, I am beginning to learn that union organization is not just a dying right; it’s a big responsibility. It takes work. It takes sacrifice. I think unions are finally ready to start fighting back. For teachers unions, no more endorsements of Common Core. No more falling for the “school districts need to be more competitive” line. No more compromising. Now is the time to turn the tide by flexing our collective muscle. This is a critical juncture in history. This is it. Sink or swim.
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The thing which likely scares Big Money is that more and more teacher union members are beginning to see exactly what you address: it takes work. And in so many cases, no one works harder or longer or with more persistence than teachers.
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Labor’s bargaining power has a cumulative effect. Without strong unions, labor has little bargaining power. That is one reason why salaries lag in “right to work” states.
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Correct me if I’m wrong/misinterpreting, but in my reading the analyses of the employment rate, one of the major reasons for it’s going “down” (which I do not believe) is that many job-seekers, unable to find jobs, simply have given up, with many having gone through unemployment benefits, so that these people are not even counted in the statistics.
And, of course, the underemployed do not get factored into this at all. It’s a near equivalent of unemployment.
Just yesterday, I was at a gathering of women, & we were discussing this terrible phenomena of day/night day care centers, whereby children stay overnight. What kind of a family life is that?!
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That is true but many more are employed far below their education or skill level, the classic Starbucks worker with a BA. They count as “employed”.
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Well, you are on to something but you are wrong. The unemployment rate that the Press and politicians like to tout (3.7%) U3 is one of six categories the most expansive category is (7.2%) U6. Which includes all those that you mention and it has been moving down pretty much in tandem with U3 the headline number.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
But the story gets more complicated than that there is another statistic we have to look at to ask what the true unemployment rate is. That is the worker participation rate. The number of people in the nation who consider themselves in the Job market at all. So a young mother raising children or a retiree with no desire to work is not participating.
The number that we look at there is; the prime age worker participation rate 25-54 after schooling and before retirement. The number is kept for males, for females, and for the age bracket.
That number had steadily risen from the 50s- 90s. Being close to 84% for most of the decade. So when Bill Clinton left office. it was 84.6% and the unemployment rate was 3.9. The worker participation rate today stands at 82.3% so we have record low unemployment yet 2.3% fewer people who consider themselves in the workforce. The Washington Post’s Samuelson would have you believe it is males sitting home playing video games; except their girlfriends must be playing as well because the female number is down as well.
As that the number keeps going up as the unemployment rate goes down. The real answer is probably that this is hidden unemployment and these people come back into the labor market as the labor market heats up. So it begs the question; is the reason that wages have been stagnant because there is a hidden labor force waiting for a job?. Is the 3.7% rate today the same as the 3.9% in the 90s?. And just to keep you guessing the French unemployment rate is at 9% bu 7% more French as a percentage of the population are around 90% as compared to our 82.3% are in the workforce.
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https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
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The Prime Age Worker Participation Rate.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
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Thank you, Joel Herman, for all the additional information & links.
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In the corporate economy, run by and for oligarchs, in which most legislators are financially dependent on Wall Street and corporate money, especially after Buckley v. Valeo (1976: money equals speech) and Citizens United (2010: unlimited money is allowed), workers a very, very low priority to the capitalist oligarchs.
This is the legacy of neoliberalism since Jimmy Carter.
Read Democracy in America? by Benjamin L. Page and Martin Gilens.
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You’re right.
This started long before Trump.
For example, under Obama, 95% of the income gains from 2009 to 2012 went to the top 1%.
That was not an accident. The vast majority of the trillions spent to boost the economy out of the Great Recession of 2008 quite purposefully went to Wall Street (big banks, corporations and others at the top),having main Street out to dry. Millions of people (including an over representation of Africans) lost their homes while bankers got rich. That’s Obama’s legacy.
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African Americans (not Africans)
Self correct strikes again!
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“Nixon was our last liberal president.” –Chomsky
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Freedom?
Freedom of speech?
To blow the whistle?
Freedom to preach?
To read a missal?
Freedom from fear?
And also want?
Freedom to jeer?
At bon vivant?
Freedom to vote?
For D or R?
Freedom, I’d note
Is not, by far
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Put into overdrive during the Clinton era…..way before Trump
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Ed
Two thoughts: Using the lens of history and being able to know the outcomes. We see the deregulation of Trucking, Airlines, and Telecommunications as a neoliberal assault on workers in those industries. Leading the charge was Ted Kennedy and Ralph Nader. I don’t think gutting labor in these regulated industries was their goal.
Which leads to labors role in their own demise. Starting with Meany refusing to endorse (and worse) McGovern a labor progressive who voted with labor over 97% of the time. . And workers can hardly be blamed for voting for Reagan the first time, sometimes with the endorsement of their Unions. But could there be a more pro-labor candidate than Mondale and a more anti-worker President than Reagan in 1984? Mondale’s loss was greater than McGovern’s. Fast forward to today. You cannot explain
he 70% of construction trades nor the 30% of teachers who voted for Trump. Sometimes you get what you deserve.
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I hesitate to say this as a Canadian it may not be my place but American voters seem to have trouble with the big picture. They seem to vote with blinders on.
It bewilder us why poor and working ass Americans seem to vote against their best interest. Big business manipulates race, gender, orientation, religion to sink deep splits into society to convince working class white men that blacks, Latinx, women, LGBT, secularists, … are their enemy when the real enemy is Koch brothers and their ilk across the nation.
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Exactly right.
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Truth. All but 2 teachers in my building voted for Trump. Most voted red this past midterm.
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Why? Would they tolerate the language and behavior in their classroom that we see daily from Trump? Do they think he is a role model? Do they approve of bullying?
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Yes, too many members in the building trades tend to vote Republican – I have to wonder if gender (i.e. the Republican party is seen as stronger and more masculine) is an influencing factor.
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@Doug….yes we have trouble seeing the big picture. It used to be that politicians were simply politicians enacting laws for the ordinary people….until the lawyers started getting in on the deals. ” Loopholes” were written into policy, policies overlapped, policies were written into bills having nothing to do with the policies. So much legal mumbo jumbo is written into law that ordinary people can’t make sense of it. I honestly think that what we are having with Trump is an epiphany….and the Koch’s are having a heart attack. If nothing else, this Trump presidency has certainly laid bare ALL of the dirty dealings of the political machine and how it has done nothing to benefit the common man yet has done everything to funnel the money to the wealthiest in society. I will say this again…..We have poverty, not because we can’t afford to feed/cloth/educate the poor, but because we can’t satisfy the rich. The country is starting to wake up and smell the coffee and is realizing that it isn’t pleasant.
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The unemployment rate is artificially inflated. It doesn’t include people who have been unemployed so long they no longer count. It doesn’t include people with advanced degrees working part time jobs at big box stores. It doesn’t include people cobbling together a “living” from multiple gigs with no benefits. We are nowhere near full employment, which is why employers can still take advantage of workers.
Incidentally, this is not a Trump thing. This is something that has been cumulatively building since at least the Reagan years steadily through both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses.
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If people can’t see that by now, they never will.
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Both parties have ignored working families. Even when workers get a modest raise, rising health care costs consume it, sometimes resulting in a step backwards in income.
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Absolutely. My paycheck shrinks every year, as health insurance premiums continue climbing. I am a strong supporter of Single Payer.
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Both major parties are owned by Wall Street.
So it’s not surprising that Wall Street calls the shots.
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dienne77
It includes all those things. You just have to know where to look.
The headline number you get on a news bulletin does not. But that is not the monthly employment report.
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Hello Diane,
You wrote about me at one time. Now, I am looking for some teachers in New Jersey, California and Illinois (any one or all) to join teachers in KY and RI in filing simultaneous, pro-se transparency/underfunding pension lawsuits in their respective state courts. Do you have some names of people to whom I might pitch this scheme? Thanks, Randy Wieck https://dianeravitch.net/2015/09/05/kentucky-history-teacher-challenges-nations-largest-equity-funds-in-court/ [https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/diane.jpg?w=200]
Kentucky History Teacher Challenges Nation’s Largest Equity Funds in Court Here is a hero. Dr. Randy Weick, a high school history teacher in Kentucky with a degree from the London School of Economics, has filed a class action suit against some of the nation’s larges… dianeravitch.net
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Randy,
I hope you get responses from readers in one of those states.
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Can it be an active individual teacher? Can retirees join?
I am thinking either of the Klonskys (Fred or Mike) in Illinois.
I know in Illinois we’re also getting ripped off on excessive fees as well.
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Randy, how do we get in touch with you? I’m a retired teacher in ILL-Annoy who is active in the I.R.T.A. (IL Retired Teachers Assn.) & would like to get involved & can get many others, I’m sure.
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https://crooksandliars.com/2018/12/turnover-rates-mcdonalds-vs-trump-white
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This is from a friend: Unions are not the answer. They could be part of it except they take from the worker and give nothing in return. When thousands are dumped from their jobs, unions do not do anything effective to counter it.
The middle class is disappearing right under our nose.
Democracy has been arrested and only the richest are growing wealthier. We are on a path of self destruction and there is so many smoke screens that our politicians tolerate, investigate, fumigate, and obliterate without ever being challenged.
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect government”, has lost all meaning through lackadasical indifference and governmental persistence.
We spend inordinate time and effort tying to accomodate every protester and in the end our government has no sustaining commonality. What do we sfand for? Everything and nothing at the same time!
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Subject: Fw: Defying our own union
Teachers in Jefferson County, KY defy their own union, JCTA, and converge on Capital to protest education-hostile legislation. Video of teachers in state capital on TRELF FB page.
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