Is The Pendulum of Power Swinging Towards US Unions? Robert Reich

[appalachiablue]

The Guardian, Nov. 1, 2023. Ed. - The United Auto Workers have scored a major victory. And it could be a sign of more to come for workers – unless the Fed undermines them again

The United Auto Workers has scored a major victory. It’s still awaiting a vote by union members, but it’s a big deal – a 25% wage increase over the four and a half years of the contract, cost-of-living increases that will further ratchet up hourly pay, the right to strike over plant closures and a shorter time period for workers to reach top pay.

If the victory ripples across the auto industry and encourages wage increases in other sectors, it will also be a victory for the American middle class.

For 30 years – from 1946 to the late 1970s – the American middle class expanded. That was largely because unions won increases in wages and benefits that roughly tracked gains in overall productivity. Non-union companies gave their workers similar raises because they knew they’d be targets of union organizing if they didn’t.

It was America’s postwar social contract.

But since the late 1970s, the wages of production workers have been nearly stagnant, adjusted for inflation. Most gains have gone to the top. What happened? For one thing, activist investors (called “corporate raiders” in the 1970s & 80s, and “private equity managers” today) got the right to mount hostile takeovers of companies, and then demand fatter profits.

Since payrolls comprise about 2/3rds of corporate costs, the raiders forced corporations to keep a lid on wages & benefits. To do this, corporations had to bust unions – outsourcing jobs abroad, moving to anti-union (AKA “right-to-work”) states and firing workers who tried to organize. Reagan legitimized all this when in 1981 he fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, Patco. The result was a dramatic decline in the bargaining power of ordinary workers. And with it, a shrinkage of the US middle class.

..Confidence in big business is at its lowest point in decades while approval of labor unions is near its highest...

(Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley).

Read more, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/01/unions-labor-strikes-biden-us-economy-robert-reich

[LakeArenal]

1. I sure hope so. But unions have a poor history of corruption too.

[appalachiablue]

2. The corruption can be watched, and isn't a reason

to abandon the push for collective bargaining power and unionization for American workers.

A longtime friend and lifelong Democrat likes to point out union drawbacks, esp in industrial organizations. He worked as a fulltime state government employee with job security and a good salary for decades. He's now retired and living on a comfortable pension.

The situation for employees in the US has deteriorated to the extreme esp with labor abuses and the rising cost of living. Something has to give and soon.

[LakeArenal]

3. I said I hope so.....

[appalachiablue]

4. I'm with that, the choice is clear