Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Labor, labor, labor: Article from the NYT about the Importance of Unions

I have been posting a lot about labor in the past couple of days, mostly having to do with the fact that the EFCA was up for a vote yesterday and the labor world has been abuzz. But, I will post at least one more because here is a must-read article from the NYT (via LabourStart) on EFCA vote yesterday. My favorite part was:


But if they don’t change the size of the economic pie, they do influence how it’s divvied up. All else equal, a union worker makes about 15 percent more per hour than a nonunion worker and also gets better benefits. So while there are many reasons inequality has increased over the last three decades — like technology and global trade — the decline of unions is certainly one of them.

David Leonhardt concludes that something needs to be done to crack down on anti-union tactics employed by corporations and that, while eliminating secret ballots might not be the best tactic, unionization is important to reduce the rampant inequality in our nation. As they say, well worth reading the whole article.

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