A Key Solution to America’s Shrinking Middle Class: Union Membership

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/04/a-key-solution-to-americas-shrinking-middle-class-union-membership/

A Key Solution to America’s Shrinking Middle Class: Union Membership

by Tula Connell, Aug 4, 2007

America’s middle class is under siege—and the nation needs progressive solution to return our middle class to the dynamic economic force it has been throughout the 20th century. On a hot summer Saturday in Chicago, more than 60 progressive netroots activists at the YearlyKos Convention at McCormick Place joined in a discussion at one of many workshops here this morning, “The Middle Class: The Problems it Faces and Progressive Solutions.”

Organized by Bonddad, who writes at Huffington Post as well as on his own Bonddad Blog, the workshop panel included me, Progressive Policy Institute co-founder Rob Shapiro, Auburn University professor and tech CEO Vic Uzumeri and DMI Communications Director Elana Levin. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) had planned to be on the panel, but got stuck in D.C. in a final late voting flurry before Congress breaks until fall.

Access to higher education, often a key step on the road to the middle class, is becoming more and more out of reach. Levin pointed out how 410,000 students whose family income is less than $50,000 a year now go to community colleges, while many more can’t afford any college educatio at all. Yet while “college is no longer a guarantee to attain the middle class,” said Levin, it also shouldn’t be necessary to have a college degree to do achieve economic security. With 13 of 20 of the fastest growing occuptional groups in areas that do not require a college degree, we also should not “fall into the trap of thinking college can solve all our problems.”

And that, of course, is where unions come in. In overviewing the decline of employer-based health care and pension benefits, my presentation made clear that the decline in health care and retirement security parallel the decline in union membership. At the same time, although U.S. productivity has increased, since 1973, productivity and income no longer are growing together. Workers’ productivity grew an impressive 18 percent between 2000 and 2006—but most people’s inflation-adjusted weekly wages only 1 percent during that time. This was the first economic expansion since World War II without a sustained pay increase for rank-and-file workers.

As fewer workers have access to affordable health care, retirement security, education and training, and as CEOs pay themselves more and more and their employees less and less, the middle class is sinking. From 1979 to 2004, the percentage of households in the “middle class” category—those with incomes between $30,000 and $90,000—fell from 47 percent to 39 percent.

FULL story at link.

[Name removed]

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[Omaha Steve]

3. The Union Difference

http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/why/uniondifference/index.cfm

Get the facts on why

* Unions Raise Wages—Especially for Minorities and Women
* Union Pay Is Higher in Nearly All Occupational Groups
* Unions Workers Have Better Health Care and Pensions
* Workers’ Incomes Are Lower in States Where Workers Don’t Have Union Rights
* Unions Are Good for Business, Productivity, and the Economy
* Unions Help Bring Low-Wage Workers Out of Poverty
* Unions Help Bring Workers Into the Middle Class

Learn more about

* Unions and Professional Workers
* Union Membership by State
* Union Membership by Industry
* Trends in Union Membership

More

* Download a one-page flier of the “Union Advantage by the Numbers.”
* How much difference does a union make? Download a quiz and find out!
* Unions 101, a one-page “crash course” on unions.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. For the first time in I don't know how long I am seeing unions protesting

That's in downtown Miami. I'm so glad. It's such a relief!