Washington Times: Declining number of union members affects all workers’ salaries

[Omaha Steve]

Last edited Fri Jun 8, 2012, 03:46 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/7/declining-number-of-union-members-affects-all-work/?page=1work/?page=1

By Patrice Hill

The Washington Times Thursday, June 7, 2012

Today’s depressed wages can be attributed to a variety of economic trends - from globalization and sending jobs offshore to new technologies and immigrant labor - but economists and scholars also point to the dramatic decline in U.S. union membership in the past 60 years, which has left rank-and-file workers without a powerful public advocate.

Labor unions were a dominant force in the economy in the 1950s, when they represented more than a third of American workers. Today, unionized workers represent about 12 percent of the workforce, and only 7 percent of private workers. Even in the most heavily unionized sector - the government, at 37 percent - they are under attack.

Voters in Wisconsin turned back an effort to oust Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s because of his drive to curb collective bargaining rights of state workers, while two California cities easily passed referendums to trim unionized city workers pension benefits.

And Republican opponents of organized labor also scored a victory in Virginia this week by forcing the coalition of governments building Metro's Silver Line into Loudoun County to drop incentives to use union labor in the $6 billion project.

FULL story at link.

[wilt the stilt]

1. when repub's say the unions are to blame

for our loss of manufacturing ask them why did the companies move operations from the south where there were no unions and they are right to work states. you will get a dumbfounded look.

[badtoworse]

8. The answer to that question is simple

At the time, the South was the lowest cost option for siting a manufacturing facility. That has changed over the last 30 or 40 years and the lowest cost options are now in third world countries. From about the end of WWII until about 1970, we were the only game in town. Now there are numerous countries competing for the manufacturing jobs. That is a reality that is not going to change. We need to focus on winning the competition rather than whining about how unfair it is that other countries can compete with us.

[Marrah_G]

10. How does one compete with a dollar a day wages?

Without the help of the government to stop this there is little any of us can do besides continue the Occupy movement and hope maybe it somehow scares them enough to do the right thing.

[badtoworse]

11. There are ways, but few on this board would agree with them.

This isn't the 1960's - the value of manufacturing labor in this global economy has declined substantially. $1 per day isn't right and seems like quite an exagerration to me, but I don't think there is a way to change the fact that workers in foreign countries are willing to make the same products for less.

You can't have high costs for low skill jobs, stringent environmental policy that makes energy very expensive, high corporate tax rates and extensive regulatory requirements to conduct business and expect to produce a competitively priced product. We will need to make some concessions in those areas. I don't think it's reasonable to expect government to impose tariffs to make up the difference because consumers here would howl at paying the high prices and our trading partners would retaliate

[jeff47]

15. So much wrong.

$1 per day isn't right and seems like quite an exagerration to me,

It isn't an exaggeration. While you won't find a wage that low in China anymore, there's many other countries in the world.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect government to impose tariffs to make up the difference because consumers here would howl at paying the high prices and our trading partners would retaliate

First, products are not being sold to consumers cheaper. The savings in manufacturing costs is mostly being used for profit and bonuses. Companies claim the goods would cost more when made by US workers, but that's because they now demand higher profit and bonuses than they used to.

Second, we're talking about impoverished 3rd world nations. They aren't buying much from us because they are impoverished. Retaliatory tariffs would do nothing.

[badtoworse]

21. What "impoverished" countries are major suppliers to the US?

Once in a while, you'll see a shirt made in Bangladesh, but usually it's India, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Mexico or China. Those are not impoverished countries and we do trade with at least some of them.

If you think products made in the USA can compete on price then explain why virtually nothing people buy is made here? You might be right that manufacturers can realize a higher margin if they produce products offshore. That means tha US manufacturer would have to accept a lower margin to compete. In a competitive environment (which we most definitively have), the US producer would be at a significant disadvantage since the foreign producer has more room to lower his price. You are also ignoring the fact that foreign producers compete among themselves - look at Canon, Nikon, Sony, Apple, Samsung, Panasonic, LG and numerous others Don't you think they compete on price? Just because there is no US competitor, it doesn't mean they are riding a gravy train.

The biggest mistake that unions made was the failure to recognize foreign workers as a competitive threat.

[wilt the stilt]

23. of course that is the answer

but what i'm trying to do is blow a hole in their argument and show them that the union argument is BS. The 1% will always look to the lowest wages.

[badtoworse]

24. Analyzing the history and dynamics of this issue is complex.

To simply say that unions are to blame is a gross oversimplification and inaccurate. On the other hand, to say they don't share some blame for the loss of jobs is not accurate either. For a long time, unions failed to look at their own competitive position relative to that of foreign workers willing to provide the same services for less. I think they see that now, but had they done so a lot earlier, they might have approached negotiations with management differently and averted some of the job losses. To that extent, they share the blame for the job losses and contributed to their own demise.

[wilt the stilt]

25. Based on what you say and foreign pressures

How does Germany maintain it's solid manufacturing base where they produce more finished goods that we do with only 80 million people. they are not paying their people peanuts. unions share some blame but the south wasn't unionized yet american manufacturing deserted them.

The reality is we are not focused on the health of the country and we will sell ourselves out for short term gain. This is caused by how we pay executives and how we are slaves to the quarterly report as opposed to real long term planning for an industry and a nation.

[badtoworse]

27. Germany doesn't compete on price; they produce high end, quality products.

Who buys a BMW to save money? I try to buy American made and do so when I can find it. "Made in USA" used to mean a lot in terms of quality. In my experience, that is largely not true anymore. We compete on price, but we are an expensive place to do business. That is the fundamental problem, not the 1%.

You are right about short term gain, but in that respect, unions are just as guilty - their focus has historically been maximizing gains in the next contract. How often did they consider questions like "where are we competitively and are we providing our client with the best value"?

[wilt the stilt]

32. You say really obvious things

Of course they compete on quality. i work with Germans every day. Really smart people. The point I was making is you are really blaming unions. they of course contribute but we as a nation sold out the middle class. The south used to laugh about how they were so smart and we aren't union so we will steal your factories. thirty years later the businesses moved out of there too.

The biggest problem is the leaders both government and business set tax policy and incentives to move everything off shore.

A classic example of short sightedness is healthcare in this country. We pay close to 17% of GDP to healthcare. the rest of the world 11%. this strangles manufacturing and investment.

The populace somehow believes that we have the best healthcare. If one thinks that other western democracies don't deliver good healthcare then one are naive.

What scares me the most for my children is the real possibility that the republican party will take over. The republican party is a southern party which is regional in nature. They hardly contributed to the industrial revolution and the information age. They think business is stealing a company from another state

Only in the south would you see the bumper sticker "American by birth Southern by the grace of god" This is putting the south above the nation(hardly patriotic). You never see this type of bumper sticker anywhere else in the country.

I live in georgia.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

2. Commentary is spot on

But this isn't the Washington Post, it's the Washington Times, which is most often a right-wing rag. I'm surprised they allowed this to come out under their masthead.

[sendero]

3. This battle is lost..

...... anyone that thinks there is ANY chance of unions gaining ground at this point is delusional.

They have been on a steady decline for decades and the decline will continue.

People who waste time trying to put toothpaste back in the tube annoy me. We have real things that CAN be done, unions are over, bleating about it won't help - and frankly they are substantially to blame for their own demise.

[jeff47]

16. So...unions always existed?

The flaw in your argument is that unions didn't used to exist. Yet they were created and gained a lot of power. Going from non-existence to powerful demonstrates that current lack of power need not be permanent.

Unions have an interesting problem - the better they do their job, the better labor feels about their working conditions, so the less people think they need unions.

Unions are on the decline now. They've got a bit further to fall. But then things are going to be so shitty for labor that unions will rise again. They will make things better for labor again, leading to people thinking they don't need unions again, leading to another decline.

[badtoworse]

22. You are ignoring an important fact

During the period when unions were gaining strength, manufacturers and service providers had no options other than the US labor market. In essence, US labor had somewhat of a monopoly, an environment in which it is easy to flex muscle. That began to change in the 1970's as foreign countries became viable options for manufacturing and service. With much less leverage, the unions lost ground as US companies moved the jobs offshore rather than accede to union demands. I believe that Sendero's point is that the failure to recognize foreign workers as a competitors was a huge mistake by the unions that has led to their current perdicament.

[jeff47]

28. Because the US was the only country in the world?

When did we invent Europe?

Not to mention, offshoring has been demonstrated to not work all that well. Even when you manage to do it decently (China) the fact that they don't use US currency screws it up in the long run. "Re-shoring" is the new trend.

[badtoworse]

31. Europe was in pretty rough shape followinfg WWII and it took a while for them to recover

The point is that you have to look at what the options were for locating manufacturing capacity at any given point in time. From the 40's through the 60's, we had the world by the short and curlies; after that, not so much.

[malaise]

4. Must read

Rec

[Romulox]

5. Right. But that includes union members buying Priuses, or the head of the DNC driving an infiniti.

"Unions" don't just mean "public sector unions".

[mathematic]

6. But is it true...?

I looked up the wage data for union/non-union full time workers. The data I found only goes back to 2000 and is from the bls.

Private Sector
% employed represented by unions
2000 9.8
2011 7.6

Private sector union representation dropped significantly over the last decade. Over a 20% drop.

Public Sector
% employed represented by unions
2000 41.8
2011 40.7

Also a drop but not nearly as large, on a relative or absolute level.

Now, how much have salaries changed...
Private Sector
Represented by unions, weekly earnings
2000 653
2011 875
% change = 34%

Not in a union, weekly earnings
2000 530
2011 716
% change = 35.1%

Public Sector
Represented by unions, weekly earnings
2000 718
2011 977
% change = 36.1%

Not in a union, weekly earnings
2000 608
2011 810
% change = 33.2%


While union workers earn more, it's important to note that they do different work than non-union. So comparing wages isn't apples to apples. On the other hand, the claim made in the article is that declining union membership affects all workers salaries, which is not supported by the data as private sector non-union wages grew more over the last decade than private sector wages for people represented by unions.

Like the wage differential, I attribute the difference in wage growth to the different jobs union and non-union do. Unions seem to be biggest in industries that heavily struggled for a least a portion of the years covered (for example, auto industry, construction post housing collapse) and thus labor in these industries has reduced bargaining power, regardless of union status. The BLS has the data by industry, which can shed some more light on the issue. I haven't looked into it.

The article seems to have as a premise that union membership leads to union jobs (and wages), so you can look at the change in union membership and the difference in union/non-union wages and conclude that the drop in membership has led to an overall drop in wages. This is clearly backwards. Membership does not lead to union jobs (and wages). Union jobs (or at least, readily unionizable jobs) lead to union membership (and wages).

[Romulox]

7. An increase in public sector union membership over the last 30 years has been accompanied by a

decrease in the percentage of the overall workforce belonging to a union.

Thus, at least as to public sector union membership, the premise is obviously false.

[jeff47]

18. The idea is if union work pays a lot more

Then workers will prefer union work. This causes non-union employers to pay more because they are competing with unions for labor. Doesn't matter if the employer is in a 'non-union' industry. That guy pulling ethernet cables could easily switch to an IBEW job if it paid a lot more.

As for declining wages: Wages are very sticky - they don't decline easily. What happens easily is they fail to rise. Low union membership has caused wages to not rise like they used to, which is effectively, but not literally, a wage cut.

For example, up until about 1980, increases in productivity caused increases in real wages. The chart looks almost like a 1:1 correlation. After 1980, productivity has soared, but real wages have stagnated. Greater union power could have captured more of those productivity gains for workers.

[WI_DEM]

9. yep, and many non-union blue collar workers don't seem to understand that...

and hate unions and vote republican.

[brush]

14. Vote repugs

It's got to be a lack of knowledge for non-union workers, and some union workers as seen in Wisconsin, to hate unions and vote republican. It's sickening to me that these union haters blithely take their paid vacations, five 8-hour work days instead of the previous six 12-hour work days, company health insurance, retirement pension plans, paid sick leave, safer work environments, more secure jobs (can't just be fired without cause on the spot), and unemployment while they bash the very unions that fought for and died in some cases to achieve those benefits in many hard fought battles with management goons and strikebreakers during the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. We're all indebted to those people who stood up to corporations that also employed children way back when. These corporations seem to be winning the battle again with their union-breaking politician puppets (Walker) and will soon be able to pay us all peanuts doing "service" jobs as they ship the remaining good jobs overseas, along with the middle class, I might add. Who's going to buy the goods manufactured then, you ask? China has a population 4-5 times bigger than ours, a vast market with a burgeoning middle class, that's who the corporations are targeting for their products. And don't forget India where the demographics are similar and the population almost as huge. Get the picture? They really don't need us anymore except for, as I mentioned, service jobs to make the 1% and their lackys comfortable.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Well duh

[snot]

13. I don't understand why Dems don't publicize charts like those Liz Warren's used --

it's easy to show the correlation between the decline in the standard of living of the US middle class and the decline of unions. Her charts showing how this decline has occurred despite more persons working per household, etc., also v. helpful.

Yes, it's cheaper to produce in countries with no labor standards. The solution should be to establish labor protections in other countries, not a race to the bottom.

The productivity of workers around the world has mushroomed, but it's mostly going to the 1%.

Another thing I'd like to mention: we could ALL be more productive and richer with a higher employment rate; that's simple math. The only ones who benefit from low employment are individual 1%'er's, who can use it to force wages lower for their own employees. But as a group, even the rich might be better off if more people were working and being productive.

[Starry Messenger]

17. Kind of scary when even the Washington Times is telling it like it is.

K&R

[leftyohiolib]

19. people who fail to see the importance of unions are tools of the right. they use them to drive a

wedge between the people who know what's good for them and the dopes. i
if you believe the battle is lost you are free to tell your boss to drop you salary to minimum wage and take all your benefits away b/c that's where you'll end up anyway. remember that unions brought you the weekend that right there should tell people what they stand to lose w/o unions

[nc4bo]

20. There are none who are so blind as those who do not see.

Or choose NOT to see.

Naomi Klein wrote about it, laid it out in black and white, we are living it.

And quite frankly, it bothers the hell out of me that so many choose not to recognize the direction some would try to lead us.

Unions are not perfect but they absolutely serve a necessary and noble purpose.

[mmonk]

26. Hate to bug you but it's the Times.

Good story though.

[Shankapotomus]

29. No shit, Sherlock.

You have to be an idiot or Republican to not see that coming.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. Ok something is going on

WITHOUT reading the story... that is NOT a headline I expect to see in the moonie times.

[NNN0LHI]

33. Yeah, the Times has concluded there is no one left to purchase what they are selling

That is what is going on. It was only a matter of time.

Lot of people have been coming to this same conclusion recently.

Don