One big reason for stagnant wages and rising inequality

[groundloop]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by In_The_Wind (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: CBS News

Anemic gains in wages have plagued U.S. workers not just since the Great Recession ended seven years ago but for years before it as well. The underlying factors vary, but research just out suggests that a major culprit is lost in the noise over jobs going offshore, immigration and the minimum wage.

The research points to the decline of organized labor, which is hitting American paychecks across the board. Some 73.1 million full-time nonunion private sector workers are losing $133 billion in wages a year due to weakened unions, according to a report released Tuesday by the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

“It’s hard to find another reason that has as much power as we find in the data,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Washington University and co-author of the report, which examined the effects of private sector union erosion on the wages of nonunion workers.

Collective bargaining helps increase the wages of all workers by settings pay and benefit standards that nearby nonunion employers also adopt. “Strong unions can mean higher wages for union members and nonunion members alike,” said Rosenfeld, thanks to the “spillover effect.”

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-big-reason-wages-are-stagnant-and-inequality-is-growing/

[turbinetree]

2. I think that people should read books by

James Bartlett and Donald Steele

David Cay Johnston

Thomas Frank

Jane Mayer

Ian Millhiser

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz


and people will see and read to fully understand what is happening and to change what happened-------------------------it was not the middle class and the working poor's fault-----------------it was the people who were put in charge and and who got paid to create this situation

[HughBeaumont]

6. David Cay Johnston is a DU member.

His books are thoroughly researched and universally hated by conservatives on account it makes all they hold dear look bad.

[turbinetree]

13. Quite some time he has been a DU member

I just finished his book "The Making of Trump", he really has past, and Johnston really questions what this person is about

[benfranklin1776]

3. Absolutely right

The improvement in wages and standards of living for all workers because of union efforts is well documented. Not to mention that unions are the only legislative lobby group that all workers benefit from since they are the primary drivers of legislative and regulatory efforts that improve working conditions for everyone. Yet another reason why this election is so important as it will determine whether we have an NLRB that enforces labor laws protecting the fundamental human right of collective bargaining for wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment, or one that will do all it can to destroy unions.

[Cryptoad]

4. Look at the Data

It all started with Reaganomics....and ever since the GOP has been able to block any efforts to reforms to correct the problem.

[CrispyQ]

14. If you were born after 1980, all you've ever heard is that unions are bad.

Unions are bad. Unions are bad. Unions are bad.

Several years ago the local grocer's union was negotiating their contract & I asked one of the clerks how it was going. "Oh, I'd never join the union." First I was surprised they had a choice. But I couldn't let her comment go, so I told her, "If it weren't for unions you wouldn't have paid time off like vacations & sick pay, or safe working conditions or health benefits." She rolled her eyes.

When I worked in the grocery store, journeyman checkers made twice the minimum wage & our benefits were stellar. We got paid overtime for any hours over 8 in one day, we got time & a half on Sundays & if you were full time & worked on a holiday, your pay for that day equaled triple time. I worked part time & put myself through college without any debt. This was 1975-1985.

I know unions aren't what they used to be & I've wondered what changed, besides just the constant message that they are bad. I think new technology created a huge number more of 'professional class' jobs. One thing I've noticed, having been both blue & white collar, is that white collar people don't think of themselves as labor. But they are! If most of your income comes from labor, you are labor. It was easy to vilify unions when a good number of labor doesn't consider themselves in that group. I think a lot of tech people woke up when they saw their jobs shipped overseas.

[Hortensis]

22. Research shows that the loss of "good jobs" lamented

by so many is the loss of the benefits of unionization, which of course benefited not just union jobs but others in the general competition for labor.

You bet white collar are labor, or "working class." So are most working people in the professional classes such as physicians and attorneys. These days many engineers do repetitive work in cubicles, are expected to punch time clocks in and out, and return the next day to more of the same.

Many physicians have had cutbacks to incomes and loss of autonomy and authority over their work just as people lower on the pay scale have, just not as much. Being run off their feet by their employers and unable to give good care due to too-heavy patient loads is normal.

Once-independent chicken farmers in our area are now supposed "independent contractors" with no benefits who have only one client -- a corporation that has designed the system so that the "farmers" who raise the chicks delivered to them are merely workers on one section of a factory line that starts and ends in other places with other "subcontractors." The "client" makes all decisions for the "subcontractors."

[Major Nikon]

5. I don't think this can be emphasized enough

The rise in the middle class followed the rise in unionism. The decline of the middle class followed the decline in unionism. This isn't just a coincidence.

[pampango]

7. Thomas Piketty agrees: income inequality due to declines in unions and minimum wage,

not globalization.

Piketty started things off by claiming that the received wisdom (at least among economists) for why inequality has increased, globalization and skill-biased technical change, simply don’t explain the phenomena very well. Neither can explain the rise of the top 1%, nor can they explain the international variation in the extent of tail inequality. Piketty did credit the role of educational exclusion in closing off access to the most elite precincts of the economy, as shown by the new Chetty, Saez, et al findings on the extent to which top universities draw their undergraduate students from rich households. But he continued on to a discussion of how the Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva (2014) findings on wage bargaining and top income shares can’t be squared with a marginal-productivity story of wage-setting. He mentioned norms of corporate governance shifting in favor of managers and owners by way of explaining tail inequality, as well as erosion of unions and the minimum wage as explanations for stagnant or falling wages at the bottom and middle of the distribution. He closed with what I consider a profound restatement of why Capital in the 21st Century is such an important book:

The gap between official discourse and what’s actually going on is enormous. The tendency is for the winner to justify inequality with meritocracy. It’s important to put these claims up for public discussion.

... Piketty’s rebuttal devastating: that progressive taxation was invented in America and that it flourished here as a complement to free and equal quality public education, not a substitute. Together, the two did not destroy capitalism. Quite the contrary: the period of their efflorescence, complete with confiscatory estate taxation, saw the highest aggregate and per-capita growth across the income distribution of any time in American history.

Piketty himself said it best: “The idea that we need to keep inequality to preserve incentives is just not consistent with reality.”

http://steinbaum.blogspot.com/2015/11/free-market-dogmatism-still-going_8.html

[Lucky Luciano]

11. Is the decline of unions partly due to globalization?

Ie - if you unionize here, then we will hire non-Union labor in Sri Lanka! So your Union is now meaningless!

[pampango]

12. Not according to Piketty. He seems to base that on the experiences in Sweden, Germany and

other progressive countries with very 'globalized' economies and very strong unions and high wages. Of course, such countries do not have 'right-to-work' type laws nor regressive tax systems but do provide legal support for their unions.

[CrispyQ]

15. Have you seen Michael Moore's movie, "Where to Invade Next?"

It's so good! Your comment about Sweden & Germany made me think of it.

[pampango]

17. Yes. It is great. Americans seem to have a difficult time learning from how other countries

do things.

[The2ndWheel]

8. Unions are strong when place matters

It doesn't in the US anymore.

When were unions strongest is America? The 1950's? It's a different world. Just like we're not going back to the 50's socially for the right, we're not going back to the 50's economically for the left. There are more people available, in the US, and around the world, to do whatever job needs to be done, and more jobs can be done anywhere. Plus we have the automation disruption already here, and there's more coming.

You're not needed. When that happens, what do unions have to hold themselves together?

[Plucketeer]

9. Most folks in the labor force today

have NO idea of the benefits that organization brought to the fore in the 20th century. As a consequence, they don't vote in their own interests - if they bother to vote at all.

[FighttheFuture]

10. If people are serious about jobs and the middle class they need to start supporting unions

again and the laws and regulations that in turn allow unions to exist; this goes especially for politicians and parties that say they do but in the end, do not.. The other side of Capital in the form of Corporations, Oligarchs and just selfish stupid people will always be working to weaken and destroy any form of collective bargaining for your livelihoods. It's just that simple.

This was apparent to all, after a brutal war, WWII, where so many gave their all, the Congress pushed through Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 as the first big blow to the gains organized labor had been making for so long. It just went on from there.

[4Q2u2]

16. Where the money is going

Last edited Tue Aug 30, 2016, 02:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Usually in Construction (specially large major projects). The difference between a Non-Union and Union Contractors bid is only 1%.
It is easy for the Non-Union to do this because they know what the Union labor rate is. Materials are usually the same for everybody. The difference in pay though is 25 to 30% different. Wonder were that money is going?
For all the people who think that prices will drop if Non-Union work is used are fooling themselves.

[groundloop]

20. Exactly.... it's a question of money going to workers or owners.

At my previous job I had to deal with HVAC and electrical contractors. I finally settled on one particular company because they consistently did better work than anyone else, while their rates were only slightly more than their competition. They happened to be the only unionized company in our area, they payed decently and as a result managed to keep their best employees.

[4Q2u2]

23. Crazy How that works

Pay people good wages and get good work results.
Funny also how I am a so called Blue Collar Worker but Lawyers, Doctors, and Business people are professionals.
Let me tell them something, When I am in my 250 Ton Crane with over 200' of Boom making picks right in heart of a city, you can bet your dam ass that all around me are counting on me being a Professional.

[senseandsensibility]

18. CBS was allowed to air this?

I haven't even heard the word union on the network news in ages, let alone anything positive. But good for them.

[groundloop]

19. Well, it was on their website. Not so sure if they aired it.

But anyway, yes, it's progress.

[dmosh42]

21. Many of the best paying jobs were in manufacturing, most of which were union jobs, but once we .....

opened the floodgates with 'free trade' and NAFTA, the big corporations and the rich sent their factories
overseas for the slave labor wages and to break our unions which they did. ANd it wasn't just Republicans
but also many of our Democrat heroes assisted in Congress, re-writing tax rules to enable the 'Trumps' in
this country to love the 'status quo'.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

24. I'll be sharing with everyone I know who blame Obama and not the ReThugs who have weakened

Right-To-Work laws and refuse to increase the minimum wage.

[In_The_Wind]

25. Locking. However this OP is perfect for GD. Please re-post it there.

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