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Saturday, April 10th, 2021

Decades-Long Corporate Assault on Unions Has Cost Typical Worker $3,250 a Year: Report

Author:     Jake Johnson
Source:     Common Dreams
Publication Date:     Thursday, April 08, 2021 b
 Link: Decades-Long Corporate Assault on Unions Has Cost Typical Worker $3,250 a Year: Report
Stephan:   Unions were instrumental in creating the American middle class. Along with Franklin Roosevelt's policies designed to foster wellbeing they transformed the peasants of America, into doctors, professors, and entrepreneurs whose small businesses transformed the U.S. landscape. But now workers don't seem to understand the role of unions, and the Republican Party from the beginnings of unions, financed by the growing class of uber-rich has opposed them. The question for American workers is: Do you organize and speak collectively as one, or do you have your individual lives defined by your corporate masters to their benefit?
People hold pro-worker signs and rally outside a Whole Foods Market after marching from Amazon headquarters in solidarity with Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama on March 26, 2021. Credit: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty 

The decades-long assault on organized labor by corporations and their allies in government resulted in a dramatic erosion of union membership that cost the median U.S. worker $3,250 per year between 1979 and 2017, according to a new report released Thursday morning by the Economic Policy Institute.

The report estimates that the percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements fell from 27% in 1979 to just 11.6% in 2019, a drop that had a direct impact on the wages of unionized workers and “spillover” consequences for non-unionized workers, who benefit from strong union density.

“Rebuilding collective bargaining is a necessary component of any policy agenda to reestablish robust wage growth for the vast majority of workers in the United States.”
—Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute

EPI distinguished fellow Lawrence Mishel, the lead author of the new report, estimates that “for the ‘typical’ or median worker, declining unionization translates to a loss of […]

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