The union movement built the middle class. For most of the past century, big business and plutocrats have waged war on unions and have largely succeeded. As the following analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows, the high point of the labor movement was in the in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As the strength of unions waned, inequality grew.
The EPI study begins:
Unions improve wages and benefits for all workers, not just union members. They help reduce income inequality by making sure all Americans, and not just the wealthy elite, share in the benefits of their labor.
Unions also reduce racial disparities in wages and raise women’s wages, helping to counteract disparate labor market outcomes by race and gender that result from occupational segregation, discrimination, and other labor market inequities related to structural racism and sexism.
Finally, unions help win progressive policies at the federal, state, and local levels that benefit all workers. And conversely, where unions are weak, wealthy corporations and their allies are more successful at pushing through policies and legislation that hurt working people. A strong labor movement protects workers, reduces disparities, and strengthens our democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’d prefer to frame the value of unions as ensuring a decent life for all workers, rather than entry to the middle class, which presumes a lower class that needs to be escaped.
Unions like the UFT are sclerotic self-serving institutions. I am a NYC retiree and a member, for now, of the UFT. In 2018 the UFT negotiated a new contract for teachers. Unknown and kept secret was a provision that there would be a reduction in cost to the city for its retirees. It turns out that the raises the union won for in-service members was paid for by the cuts to retiree benefits. This is the second time a cut was enacted for retirees. The latest cut is very serious. Members are being switched out of traditional Medicare into Medicare Advantage on January 1st 2022. This was kept secret from all parties and only became public when a member of the Professional Staff Congress of City University (PSC) went public a few months ago. Since then seniors are in a rage as they learn of this with so little time to contemplate whether to choose to remain in traditional Medicare at a high cost for the previously free supplement or bite the bullet for financial reasons and go with MA. Truly disgusting behavior by the UFT. Imagine a retiree from 20 or more years ago with a much smaller pension now faced with a $200 increase in a monthly expense. Remember that retirees have no vote for new contracts so this was done without any retiree participation.
A lawyer was hired recently in an attempt to get an injunction for now and hopefully kill it completely.
Without the union, who knows if you would have any benefits in the first place. I’ve spent the last few days asking some teachers who quit the union why they did it. I’ve heard a common thread in their answers. They don’t agree with some detail in the union’s platform for collective bargaining, so they give up entirely on collective bargaining. In talking to these teachers, I learned that one of them had fallen for an anti-union teachers organization. He pays dues to the group in exchange for legal representation and liability insurance. Dumb. He was convinced that the union wouldn’t protect him if he got into trouble again. He doesn’t realize that he doesn’t have a right to legal representation in disciplinary meetings. He has a right to have union representation. If it weren’t for the union, he would have no rights at all. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Who hired representation? Was it the uft retired teachers chapter or did you have to do it outside the union? I found this on the retired teachers chapter site and wondered if it solves the issue, or is just doubletalk & still costs you all more: https://www.uft.org/news/retired-teachers-chapter-news/news-stories/new-health-plan-medicare-eligible-retirees
https://www.facebook.com/groups/888622578669131/posts/900643427467046/
In Denmark the unionization rate is about 67% while in the US it’s 10.3%. There’s no war on unions in Denmark. The anti-union movement in the US accounts for the hatred for public schools which are largely unionized. The reform movement has the intended side-effect of destroying the teacher’s unions. Charter schools, private schools and religious schools are non-union except in very rare cases. The GOP is vehemently anti-union and the Democrats are a weak not always dependable ally to unions.
Denmark is not the only one. I’ve posted a list in a comment below, but it’s in moderation. The Nordics plus Belgium run 52-67% unionized, & all their gini coefficients [measuring income & wealth inequality after taxes & transfers] are around .25 ( = “relative equality “).
There’s an “adequate equality” group including Italy, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Australia & Spain that have between 14-34% unionization.
Once you get below 14%, the results are motley: Mexico at 12% unionized is a startling .48 gini [= big income gap]– Turkey is in that category too, with 9% in unions (.41 gini). US, at 10% in unions, runs just shy of “big income gap” at .38. Yet both S Korea (10%) and France (8%) despite low union levels eke out adequate equality (SKorea .32, France .29); guess they have other measures to deal with this besides unions, taxes, transfers.
A favorable GINI is not always about the presence of unions, although there are clear connections. Countries that also properly distribute wealth and have progressive taxation and strong public commons also get to claim favorable GINIs as well.
Yes, thanks Robert! I don’t know much about SKorea, but I was surprised to find France had such low unionization, as I’ve seen so many examples of their national strikes over wages & hours for healthcare workers & other cohorts [which got results].. Apparently one doesn’t need unions if other govtl factors are aligned with public goods.
Unions allow the worker to take advantage of collective bargaining. Without it,
management has a definite advantage in setting wages. Destroying unions is simply one of the playbook issues adopted when circumstances for accumulating huge amounts of wealth became obvious.
If it hadn’t been for union membership, my college summers would have been much more difficult to navigate with two kids. It simply gives a better life to all its members
Higher wages allow sellers to raise prices and spread the wage increase costs across all consumers.
I think the best argument for unions is no one has ever come up with up anything to replace them.
All of the “workplace empowerment” and “skills gap” theories promoted by anti-union economists, politicians and lobbyists haven’t done a thing for working people.
It’s fashionable to say unions are old fashioned but all of the people who oppose them offer absolutely nothing to working people to replace collective bargaining other than corporate management retreat slogans they cribbed from CEO’s.
Ed reformers are the absolute worst on wages. If it were up to the ed reform echo chamber every teacher in this country would be making 15 dollars an hour. You see it in their proposals- every one of their privatization proposals includes a “cheap labor” provision, where they seek to replace higher wage teachers with low wage “guides” or junk ed tech.
They all promoted a tutoring scheme that included NO pay for the tutors- people like Arne Duncan and John King who probably make 500k a year promoting ed reform were celebrating a tutoring proposal where the tutors were paid nothing. Zero. So the only people making any money for “tutoring” are the ed reformers promoting the zero wage tutoring proposal. These are people who “respect” teachers? They don’t even want to pay them. The ed reform university professors should be embarrassed. What are they paying a Harvard or Georgetown professor these days? More than “zero” I assume.
I’m always amused when ed reformers go after teachers union leaders compensation.
I wonder what the compensation total would be if we added up every full time, paid charter/voucher promoter in ed reform. Tens of millions of dollars.
Does anyone even know what the heads of the big charter lobbying orgs are paid? What about the tens of ed reform think tanks? This is a well compensated group of people! I don’t mind that the ed reform echo chamber members are all well-paid, but are they comfortable with this level of hypocrisy, where they go after Weingarten for 600K a year when their echo chamber pays millions in compensation for lobbying for privatization? Why the double standard?
Charter founder Eva Moskowitz receives nearly $1 million a year. I don’t read any criticism.
I cannot stop ragging on her!
This is a very important study. I’m saving it.
I don’t get it. This analysis reads like a basic primer on labor unions. All along I’ve seen our decline in union membership as a direct result of union-busting, loss of mfg jobs, and the general push to “cut overhead” [i.e., QOL for middle & working classes] so as to compete with low-wage countries. Practically all that’s left to bust up is the public sector, & inroads have been made. Now I’m wondering if public rancor against unions isn’t more like what I think ails a large segment of anti-vaxxers: no memory/ historical sense of the scourges of TB, smallpox, polio et al in pre-vaccine days.
For a down&dirty thumbnail confirmation of the analysis, take a look at 18 OECD countries’ unionization rate, each compared to its gini coefficient [income/wealth inequality: 0= perfect equality, 1= max inequality (measured after taxes and transfers).]
Denmark 67% .25
Sweden 67% .26
Finland 59% .26
Belgium 54% .26
Norway 52% .25
Italy 34% .34
Canada 26% .32
UK 23% .35
Germany 19% .30
Nethrlnds 19% .29
Japan 17% .33
Australia 14% .34
Spain 14% .32
Mexico 12% .48
S Korea 10% .32
US 10% .38
Turkey 9% .41
France 8% .29
There’s a lot of talk in the press today about polls that show many Americans are re-thinking job choices after having been enforced by covid to sit home & reassess for a while, during which time they got a stimulus check or two, and unemployment benefits even for gig-workers, even for hours that were merely cut back, in many cases plumped by fed supplements. Middle-class workers too: in a recent NYT article a NYC employee was interviewed who found that live online zoom work accomplished objectives more efficiently, while allowing her to simultaneously increase family time & accomplish more personal objectives. She felt she was not alone among colleagues to seriously consider leaving the public sector now that DiBlasio had reqd them to return to offices. Changes of this type [more online, less onsite] will clearly be adopted by higher-paying private sector employers: they’ve had 18mos to trial it, it works, and it’s on the whole cheaper.
It’s hard to project at the moment: hard-hit restaurant/ leisure/ entertainment businesses that were reviving briefly during what looked like ‘covid’s almost over’ desperately needed employees & pay was ratcheting up. Now during delta demand is receding again. But on the whole, it looks to me like a good future for re-unionization/ higher wages. Especially for essential workers, which includes child-care and K12 ed, without which re-staffing biz can’t get far.
And, ofc, another big story that is little remarked upon here: kids are back in school AND contracting Covid and being hospitalized at alarming rates.
Which was totally predictable.
Americans don’t know THIS REALLY BASIC STUFF. If the Democratic Party were not primarily just a less egregious servant of the rich, it would spend time and money to educate the public about these matters–about how unions = better benefits and wages for workers, about how universal single-payer healthcare systems are cheaper and have better health outcomes, and so on.
The progressive wing of the party is like another institution altogether. It’s going to be important to grow that.
And thank you, Diane, for posting this!
The truth!
Say it loudly. Say it often.
Unions are the stuff of nightmares for the oligarchy. They are what the oligarchs hate most.
Correct, Bob. My comment still in moderation started by saying (in surprise) that this analysis sounded like a primer for people who never heard of unions. Who had neither living memory nor history of the union movement– of what the US was like between 1930’s-late 1970’s nor the struggle since late 19thC to get us to that point. Let alone the kind of vibrant, increasingly equitable society we enjoyed, 1946-1979. I’d always thought of the demise of unions as the result of union-busting, loss of mfg jobs, & the $clouty corporate push to “cut overhead” [ = destroy public goods so as to render US wage equivalent to 3rd world countries]. Now I’m thinking the US public rancor against unions is partly about people– like anti-vaxxers who have no memory of pre-vaccine infection scourges– who have no concept of what things were like here before unions, & therefore can’t see we’ve been turning the clock back to a far worse place.
Yes, Ginny!!!! There is this loss of memory.
“I like uneducated people,” said Jabba the Trump.
The union movement built the middle class.
What a theme for a television ad campaign!
I’m late and not well known in this community … but I’m a late convert to unions and a chart like that EPI study helped turn me around. (My day job is at NEA)
Reply to Bob Shepherd: Ad campaign? Check out my novel, UNION MADE.
Reply especially to Michael Brocoum but everyone might find this interesting. It’s a metaphor I learned from the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers.
UNIONS ARE NOT A SODA MACHINE.
With a soda machine, you put money in and get soda out. If the soda doesn’t come out … then something went wrong, and you can complain about it.
Unions aren’t like that: Dues go in and raises come out … complain if you don’t get what you want. That’s not how unions work – though disappointed members sometimes think they should.
A union is like a gym membership. Paying your dues lets you use the gym. But actually lifting the weights or running the miles …is up to you. If you’re not in better shape at the end of the month, you can’t blame the gym.
A union is a tool. Creating a union enables members to take complaints and demands to management more effectively than any one person could on their own. Unions are the best tool ever created for working people, and the natural counterbalance (capitalist negotiating partner) to the concentrated power of the employer. But success is not guaranteed and we still need to do the work.
Will definitely check out the novel. Great comment.
Thanks! Let me know how it turns out (ericlotke.com).
Re: ad campaigns. I am convinced that the U.S. citizenry is profoundly ignorant about a lot of core issues. For example, it doesn’t know that U.S. healthcare costs are TWICE, per capita, what they are for the OECD (and they don’t know what the OECD is) and that healthcare outcomes are WORSE. And it doesn’t know that the U.S. is alone among industrialized nations in not having universal single payer health insurance.
And nothing will change until the public is educated about these matters. Who is going to do that? Well, the national Democratic Party should via television and internet public service announcements.
To what extent are unions complicit in the guarding of the present health system. After all, those with negotiated contracts often have better coverage, for all the reasons described above. Do the unions want to make sure that the people in general have health care? Or do the representatives of unions fear their membership will not be happy with any change?
I do not mean these as rhetorical questions. I really cannot say.
Unions definitely helped create the middle class, better working conditions, 8 hour workday, weekends off, etc. No question that they were important to level the playing field between management/owners and the workers. That was then. As a member of the UFT retirees I see, at least this union, as more of a self serving organization with members being its ATM. The best evidence I have for that are the 2005 and 2018 contracts. Both disasters. You might ask why do the workers vote for the existing president? One reason is that incumbency confers a 90% chance of winning. But how about when a current president retires? Well the union leaders have a trick to keep management in power, in the case of the UFT the presidents appoint an “interim acting” about a year before their term expires if they plan to retire. The interim acting becomes essentially an incumbent when votes are held, making defeat statistically very difficult. Hence we have a sclerotic union that does not respond to the needs of the workers or even its retiree members.
Except when they diminish member retirees in secret via a new contract that retirees have no vote in or knowledge of.
Hmmm. Knowing nothing about your UFT experience and taking no position, I say two things, both hopefully agreeable:
1) Unions are, on the whole, important and good.
2) All union hands are not clean. The movement has plenty to apologize for.
Have a great day.
Unions are critical to all countries. Corruption in unions needs to be stamped out so that they are in business for their members and not for themselves as big corporate machinery. Research the history and power structure of the of the UFT, NYSUT, and AFT and interview many of its members. Look at the recent record of the UFT and its support of privatized, inferior Medicare. Look at how the UFT lobbied Albany NOT to bring the New york Healthcare ACt for a vote to the floor.
Correct. The UFT is a self-serving organization to benefit first and foremost for the union leadership.