The case for unions

[Omaha Steve]

By Matthew Rozsa
Oct 9, 2015, 2:08pm CT | Last updated Oct 9, 2015, 2:54pm CT

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/union-huffington-post-gawker-digital-media/

On Wednesday morning, Huffington Post employees sent out a letter to their colleagues calling for them to unionize. “We believe organizing is the best way both to preserve what’s already working and to bring about positive change,” they argued. “Simply, a union will give us a voice in our newsroom’s future.”

The Huffington Post writers may be making headlines right now with their movement to unionize, but they are hardly the first online publication to work toward that goal. Gawker’s media staff made the decision tto unionize back in June, followed swiftly by Salon, Vice, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera America, and ThinkProgress. Considering that increasing numbers of Americans are receiving their news and political opinions from the Internet, the digital media unionization trend is noteworthy.

This raises an important question: Do unions work? In short, yes they do. When unions are stronger, the rise in wages increases broader purchasing power among consumers, feeding economic growth and enabling employers to hire even more workers.

What’s more, unions actually improve the economic status of non-union workers as well as unionized ones. Since the benefits that accrue to organized workers frequently become the norm within their respective industries, employers that don’t have a unionized workforce face pressure to provide similar wages and other perks—lest they face a labor problem of their own.

FULL story at link.

[merrily]

1. Political writers are unionizing has great symmetry and an internal logic. I love it.

[daleanime]

2. K&R.....