Labor Day should be a day on, not a
day off, in the effort to reclaim the American dream for working people.
Labor
Day is supposed to be a celebration of workers, but it’s been a long time since
workers have been celebrated — or for that matter, have had a reason to
celebrate. That’s because the union movement that gave us this holiday is, at
least numerically, a shadow of its former self.
If
we really want to give workers something to cheer about, we need to revitalize
unions.
It’s
no coincidence that prosperity was widely shared when unions were at the height
of their power in the decades after World War II, and that inequality has
soared as unions have been weakened.
That’s
what I conclude in Inequality: Rebuilding the Middle Class Requires
Reviving Strong Unions, a new Campaign for America’s Future report. My
analysis tracks the simultaneous decline in the power of the labor
movement and the fortunes of middle-class workers. It makes the case in simple
terms.
One
chart reinforces the point. It compares union membership with the share of
income going to the top 10 percent since the 1920s. When only one in 10 workers
belonged to unions in the early 1930s, the richest 10 percent pocketed nearly
half of the nation’s income.
Then
President Franklin D. Roosevelt began a set of bold New Deal initiatives that
dramatically increased the power of workers to join unions and bargain
collectively. The share of workers who were unionized rose to about one-third
by the late 1940s. At that point, the bottom 90 percent saw a significant
increase in their share of national income.
Today,
as union membership declines to low levels last seen in the 1920s, the share of
national income going to the top 10 percent is rising — to levels not seen
since then either.
For more cartoons by R.J. Matson, click here. |
A
corporate-driven propaganda campaign has for decades blamed labor unions for
saddling American corporations with burdens that made them uncompetitive in the
global economy.
That
has proven to be cover for dismantling the forces that kept corporations from
rigging the economic rules in their favor. When corporate power was kept in
check by union power, workers and corporations at least had a fighting chance
to prosper together. Without that check, workers are losing. As wages erode,
benefits disappear, work conditions become harsher and jobs themselves become
more unstable.
Also by R.J. Matson |
Across
the United States, fast-food worker strikes are fueling state and municipal
minimum-wage increases while injecting new energy and ideas to worker
organizing efforts.
President
Barack Obama has used executive orders to raise the minimum wage for federal
contract workers and require adherence to basic fair labor standards, including
the right to organize. These orders could have effects that ripple through to
private sector workers.
Labor
Day would live up to its purpose if it not only gave workers a temporary
respite from the rigors of their jobs, but also drove a national effort to
empower workers once again to rebalance the economic scales so that we can
rebuild a growing, stable middle class. It needs to be a day on, not a day off,
in the effort to reclaim the American dream for working people.
Robert
Borosage is the co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a center for
ideas and action that works to build an enduring majority for progressive
change.
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