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The REAP Advisor is a newsletter that is periodically published on this Website to bring information of interest to our readers.

REAP…

August 26, 2007 E-MAIL: INFO@REAP.ORG WEBSITE: WWW.REAPINC.ORG

ARE UNIONS NEEDED TODAY?

Today, the percent of workers belonging to unions is less than half of what it was in 1980. Some experts who follow developments in organized labor believe that unions have become marginalized with less and less ability to effectively represent workers and be a major player in the economic, social and political arenas. These same experts advance the position that the decline of unions will continue and their ability to effectively represent this nation’s workers will be minimal at best. Therefore, the question is posed, are unions needed?

This paper does not focus on the causes of the decline of organized labor but, instead, on the question of whether unions are needed. To answer this question, we only have to examine where American workers, union and non-union, blue and white collar, educated and less educated stand today.

In the richest country in the world, American workers hope to obtain some very basic achievements in exchange for generating such great wealth for the system. First, they need a livable wage on which they can support their families. Second, they need meaningful and affordable health insurance to protect themselves and their families. Third, they need meaningful job security so they can continue to support their family. Fourth, they need a meaningful retirement plan to live on when they retire, after giving decades of service to creating wealth for the system. Not much to ask when one considers what American workers have created!

From the span of time shortly after World War II up through the mid 1970s, a strong trade union movement served as a powerful force in helping American workers (union and non-union) move toward such goals. During this time, the standard of living for American workers became the envy of workers around the world. However, beginning in the mid 1970s and throughout the subsequent decades, Corporate America and its political allies at all levels of government launched a systematic and relentless assault on unions to weaken them in order to destroy past worker gains. The results of this three-decade assault on unions came at a steep cost to all American workers.

The historic decline in union membership has been accompanied by a decline in workers’ real wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Ninety percent of Americans have become big economic losers in the past 25 to 30 years. More than 72 percent of the workforce saw their real wages (after adjusted for inflation) sharply slide backwards since 1979, despite a 40-percent increase in productivity.

The real median take home pay of the American worker is around $1 an hour less today than in 1982.

The average hourly wage for more than 100 million workers has risen by only 31 cents or 1.2 cents a year since 1980.

More than 46 million U.S. Citizens have no health insurance coverage at all, including more than 31 million who are employed. At an alarming rate, employers are terminating worker health insurance plans for active and retired workers, or cutting their benefits and increasing worker out of pocket expenses. In the past five years, the workers’ share of health care costs have risen from 26 percent to 32 percent.

Since 1985, more than 97,000 defined benefit pension plans have been dismantled or terminated leaving workers with a fraction of what their retirement otherwise would have called for, or, in many cases, no retirement benefit at all. In 1980, roughly 40 percent of private sector jobs had pension benefits; today less than 20 percent do. At the same time as employers are dismantling worker pension plans, from 1984 to 2004 more than $1.68 trillion in workers’ payroll tax contributions to Social Security, not counting interest were permanently diverted from the Social Security Trust Fund to cover U.S. budget deficits thus creating a crisis for workers relying on Social Security for part or all of their retirement.

In the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the U.S. Congress lowered the top corporate income tax rate from 46 percent to 34 percent, the largest reduction since the tax law was enacted in 1909. From 1980 to 2002, the median working family total federal tax burden (income and tax burden) has risen from 23 percent to 30 percent while the tax burden for the wealthiest one percent of households has fallen from 31 percent to 21 percent.

In 2005, corporate profits were up 21.3 percent setting a 40-year record. On the other hand, after adjusting for inflation real disposable American per capita incomes were up a mere 0.5 percent. For all of 2005, before tax profits stood at $1.35 trillion up from $767 billon in 2001.

Between 2000 and 2003, annual manufacturing employment in the United States declined by almost 3 million jobs. The level of manufacturing employment in 2003 was 14.3 million, the lowest since 1950. But it is not just manufacturing jobs that are going abroad. Several million white collar jobs have been exported across the ocean as well, and it is predicted that during the next 15 years nearly 4 million more white collar jobs will follow.

The reality is that American workers from all walks of life blue and white collar, male and female, and people of color are in the same sinking boat. Their ability to obtain a livable wage, have affordable health care coverage, job security, and meaningful retirement is under attack and is being substantially eroded at a rapid pace. Is there a need for unions? At no time in the last 70 years have American workers been under more direct and intense attack from Corporate America, reactionary politicians, and the wealthy. Not since the 1920s when unions were in a weakened state, similar to what they are today have Americans been so vulnerable and powerless. Are unions needed today? Unions are needed more so today than ever if Americans are to reverse their economic, social, and political decline.

Without a strong labor movement the country pays a heavy price as we have seen. Wages tumble, race and gender pay gaps widen, benefits such as pensions and health insurance are eroded or disappear, insecurity, poverty, and inequality increase. Inequality is now at the level it was in the 1920s.

Unions raise wages and benefits for their members and when unions are strong and able to represent their members these gains spread throughout the economy; non-union companies increase their wages and benefits and all workers have more purchasing power. A Center for American Progress report finds that strengthening unions is critical to reducing poverty in the United States. Unions also give workers a greater voice at work and in our democracy.

It is no mystery why Corporate America and its allies attacked and substantially weakened unions during the past three decades. A weakened labor movement means the job of driving Americans’ wages, benefits, and other conditions of employment back becomes much more obtainable. Without a strong labor movement workers are unable to effectively protect themselves and significantly move forward on economic, social, or political fronts. Without a strong labor movement is also very difficult for workers to effectively participate in democracy in a way that serves their best interest. History tells us that in any country where a dictator has taken over, one of the first things they do is to crush any organized labor movement in existence. In the United States this is not being done with guns, tanks, and soldiers; nevertheless, bad or ineffective labor laws, reactionary politicians, and anti-union consultants and lawyers are all designed to substantially weaken or destroy organized labor and render American workers to their most vulnerable position. Do we need unions? Yes, more so than ever.

REAP

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WEBSITE: REAPINC.ORG