Sunday, September 2, 2012

Why unions? To fight for good jobs and against inequality

Crowd of union workers and supporters with signs. Text Why unions? Good jobs are too hard to come by, and the Republican party is dedicated to asking not why more people don't have good jobs, but why a few people still do even though they're not the corporate executives and Wall Street bankers who Republicans believe deserve the best of everything.
Graph of the share of workers with good jobs. Jagged line on general downward trend through 1980s, rebounding in 1990s, declining again. The rich are getting more and more of the money, and they're using it to buy more power and more opportunities to get still more money.
Table showing the share of net worth held by percentile of wealth owners, 1989-2010. Top 10 percent, especially top 1 percent, has increasing share of wealth, bottom 50 percent has only 1.1 percent of total wealth. It's worth thinking about Labor Day, and supporting unions, because unions are a force, however small, against this growing inequality. In that race-to-the-bottom context, union workers do better. They're not making Wall Street money, but they're doing better than Walmart money:
Bar graph showing the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers, comparing union and non-union workers. Across demographic groups, union workers earn more. Unions help people do better and they promote equality, closing ethnic and racial pay gaps. As unions have declined, income inequality has risen, and that's no coincidence. Union members or not, workers benefit from a strong labor movement. And yes, road or building or bridge, workers built it.


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