[PDF] How Unions Can Help Restore The Middle Class eBook
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Transcript of the testimony of Dr. Paula B. Voos, Professor, School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in 2009. She discusses the economic impact that labor unions have in the United States, especially on the middle class. She believes that greater union membership would help the U.S. recover from the current economic downturn and that it would help the U.S. transition to compete more effectively on the international level on the basis of high productivity, high quality, and innovation. She urges changes in our nation's labor law that would make it easier for workers to organize labor unions and to build a successful working relationship with their employer, free of unnecessary labor-management conflict.
From steel workers, Teamsters, and coal miners to teachers, actors, and civil servants, union members once accounted for more than one third of the American workforce. At a mere 12 percent, union membership today is a shadow of what it once was. What happened to organized labor in America and what can be done to restore it to its role of the defender of middle-class values and economic well-being? Award-winning investigative reporter Philip M. Dine takes us on a riveting journey through America's cities and back roads, its factories and union halls, to answer those questions. From the health.
The income distribution in the United States is, from a middle class perspective, as bad as it has been since the great depression. Wages, even for college graduates, are falling behind inflation. The number of families in poverty is growing. Middle Class*Union Made examines the economic forces of price gouging, wage cutting, and excessive debt that are weakening the middle class and leading us toward a landlord society that benefits none but the very few. The income distribution in the United States is now as tilted toward the hyper-wealthy and against the middle class as it has been since the Great Depression. Government must help in reversing the trend, but it cannot do it alone. Strong and effective unions are an essential part of any strategy that will restore and maintain the American middle class.
Author : Mark W. Robbins Publisher : University of Michigan Press Page : 233 pages File Size : 15,88 MB Release : 2017-05-19 Category : History ISBN : 0472122797
Middle Class Union argues that the period following World War I was a pivotal moment in the development of middle-class consumer politics in the 20th century. At this time, middle-class Americans politically mobilized to define for society what was fair in the growing consumer marketplace. They projected themselves as guardians of the producerist values of hard work, honesty, and thrift, and called for greater adherence to them among the working and elite classes. In this era and in later periods, they flexed their muscles as consumers, and claimed to defend the values of the nation. Combining social history with interdisciplinary approaches to the study of consumption and symbolic space, Middle Class Union illustrates how acts of consumption, representations of the middle class in literary, journalistic, and artistic discourses, and ground-level organizing combined to enable white-collar activists to establish themselves as both the middle class and the backbone of the nation. This book contributes to labor history by examining the nexus of class and consumption to show how many white-collar workers drew on their consumer identity to express an anti-labor politics, later facilitating the struggles of unions throughout the post–World War I years. It also contributes to political history by emphasizing how these middle-class activists laid important groundwork for both 1920s business conservatism and New Deal liberalism. They exerted their political influence well before the post–World War II period, when a self-interested and powerful middle-class consumer identity is more widely acknowledged to have taken hold.
From steel workers, Teamsters, and coal miners to teachers, actors, and civil servants, union members once accounted for more than one third of the American workforce. At a mere 12 percent, union membership today is a shadow of what it once was. What happened to organized labor in America and what can be done to restore it to its role of the defender of middle-class values and economic well-being? Award-winning investigative reporter Philip M. Dine takes us on a riveting journey through America's cities and back roads, its factories and union halls, to answer those questions. From the health care crisis to massive job flight overseas, from rampant home foreclosures to illegal immigration, he clearly shows how virtually every major economic, political, and social trend impacting our way of life is tied to the state of America's unions. Combining a compelling narrative with expert analysis, Dine offers firsthand accounts of the union members striving to make their voices heard in a political landscape increasingly shaped by corporate interests, including how: The women of Delta Pride-a major player in the multi-billion dollar catfish industry-went up against generations of racial and economic prejudice Iowa's firefighters union flexed its collective muscle to score a major political victory in the 2004 caucus The American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO played a key role in bringing down the Iron Curtain The Teamsters enlisted community support to temporarily stop a move by Mr. Coffee to relocate to Mexico and saved nearly 400 manufacturing jobs in the Cleveland area A reporter who has covered labor for two decades, Dine not only details where labor has gone wrong, but he also offers sage advice on how it can adapt to a global economy to recover the ground it lost over the last quarter century.
In this book Charles Morris brings forth the compelling argument that the best means to restore economic balance and support for the American middle class is by promoting and reestablishing the long-forgotten process of non-majority collective bargaining.
In A Better Bargain, Martin Manley delivers a compelling case for a modern form of income bargaining to grow America's vital middle class. He describes why investments in education, technology, or trade are unlikely to raise the pay of below-median workers. He argues that higher minimum wages or basic incomes can reduce poverty, but do little for those earning $40-$70,000 per year. Writing as a former union organizer, Assistant US Labor Secretary, and successful technology entrepreneur, Manley challenges conventional wisdom about how best to distribute pay in a modern economy. This well-crafted and provocative narrative describes how employers can organize to strengthen labor markets with unions that are as easy to form, join, or quit as a bowling league. A Better Bargain is a manifesto for renewing the American middle class. It outlines the rules, incentives, and information needed for income bargaining to grow competitive businesses, strengthen civil society, and once again award larger pay raises to those who earn the least.
American society has grown dramatically more unequal over the past quarter century. The economic gains of American workers after World War II have slowly been eroded--in part because organized labor has gone from encompassing one-third of the private sector workers to less than one-tenth. One reason for the labor movement's collapse is the existence of weak labor laws that, for example, impose only minimal penalties on employers who illegally fire workers for trying to organize a union. Attempts to reform labor law have fallen short because labor is caught in a political box: To achieve reform, labor needs the political power that comes from expanding union membership; to grow, however, unions need labor law reform. "Labor Organizing as a Civil Right" lays out the case for a new approach, one that takes the issue beyond the confines of labor law by amending the Civil Rights Act so that it prohibits discrimination against workers trying to organize a union. The authors argue that this strategy would have two significant benefits. First, enhanced penalties under the Civil Rights Act would provide a greater deterrent against the illegal firing of employees who try to organize. Second, as a political matter, identifying the ability to form a union as a civil right frames the issue in a way that Americans can readily understand. The book explains the American labor movement's historical importance to social change, it provides data on the failure of current law to deter employer abuses, and it compares U.S. labor protections to those of most other developed nations. It also contains a detailed discussion of what amending the Civil Rights Act to protect labor organizing would mean as well as an outline of the connection between civil rights and labor movements and analysis of the politics of civil rights and labor law reform.