The Price Of Labor's Decline

[2Design]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/a6959_2004sep8

<snip>
But there is a larger story about workers and organized labor that has gone largely unnoticed this year. I was reminded of it by a conversation on the train coming back from New York. My seatmate, a fellow reporter, was asking questions about the changes I had seen in Congress since I started covering Capitol Hill almost 50 years ago. And when we got around to discussing lobbyists, he seemed genuinely surprised when I said that back then -- and for decades afterward -- the most influential lobbyists did not represent business or trade associations but labor unions.

<snip>
It made me realize how rarely observers like me make the link between the decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of liberal legislation, and the steady weakening of organized labor.

The economic effects of that trend are well documented. In the just-published update of their annual volume, "The State of Working America," Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy Institute chart the decline of union membership from roughly one-quarter of the workforce in the late 1970s to barely one-eighth today.

"This falling rate of unionization has lowered wages, not only because some workers no longer receive the higher union wage, but also because there is less pressure on non-union employers to raise wages," they write. And the gap is large. In 2003 the average blue-collar union job paid $30.76 an hour in wages and benefits, compared with $18.11 for the nonunion job.

<snip>

[dumpster_baby]

1. no duh!

brilliant grasp of the obvious....

[sam sarrha]

2. I worked for Boeings only nonUnion shop in El Paso TX ,only $8.28 hr after

3 years working on the F22 program.. I was an electronics rework specialist i did boards that they sent me they couldnt do in Seatle and LA.