INDIVISIBLE Lambertville NJ / New Hope PA

Category: Unions

  • A Measure of Value: Labor Day,  Unions and Minimum Wage

    Contributed by Sarah Gold.

    It’s Labor Day! You may have seen the bumper stickers – Unions: The Folks Who Brought You the Weekend. Historically, unions have pushed for safer working conditions and better pay. This has had real life impacts: union workers have a $1.24 per hour wage premium compared to non-union workers. The wage premium is even higher for Black and Hispanic workers: $2.60 and $3.44, respectively. 

    Despite of the importance of unions, however, union membership has dropped significantly over the last several decades, from about 20% in the early 1980s to just over 10% today, in part due to states adopting “right to work” laws that permit workers to work in unionized workplaces without paying union dues, weakening union strength.

    Simultaneously, the real value of the minimum wage has decreased over time. In 1960, the minimum wage was worth 46% of the national median wage for full-time workers. Today, it’s worth about a third of the median wage. More concretely, in 1960, when the minimum wage was adopted, it was worth $8.65 in today’s dollars while today’s federal minimum wage is $7.25. 

    While some states and municipalities have raised their minimum wages, there is currently no state in which a full-time minimum wage worker can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment; childcare costs are similarly daunting and cost nearly as much as in-state college tuition. The minimum wage is not a living wage (try this activity from the New York Times and see if you could live on the minimum wage).

    The federal minimum wage has not been increased in over a decade. Biden and Harris are committed to raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and encouraging and incentivizing unionization and collective bargaining. Beyond simply raising the minimum wage, the Biden-Harris Administration would also expand eligibility to include workers who are currently excluded from minimum wage laws (like farmworkers and domestic workers), addressing the systemic racism currently embedded in our minimum wage laws.

  • Into the Way Back Machine: History of the National Labor Relations Act

     Contributed by Deb Kline.

    The National Labor Relations Act, signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, was a response to bad corporate behavior during the Great Depression. As unemployment deepened in the early 1930s, companies used their leverage to break unions — by conditioning a job on a worker’s agreement not to join one, or hiring private security to threaten union leaders, or sending strikebreakers to interrupt picket lines. 

    The N.L.R.A. forced employers to the bargaining table by giving workers the right to collectively bargain. Along with investigating companies for interfering with organizing, the N.L.R.B. would hold elections for unions and certify them when they won. By the mid-1940s, union membership was at a high point of 35 percent of American workers, in contrast to the low of 2.5 million union members during the bad old days of 1933.  

    Then big business hit back. In 1947, over President Harry Truman’s veto, Republican majorities in Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which amended the N.L.R.A. by effectively permitting employers to use work time for mandatory anti-union meetings, banning sympathy strikes and boycotts and allowing states to pass right-to-work laws, which ban mandatory union dues for workers even though they are benefiting from a union’s representation. The last change is a big blow to labor’s political power because it reduces union membership and revenue.

    For decades, though membership began to decline, unions held their own in an economy that still centered on U.S.-based manufacturing.  Unions struggled to adjust to the hardball strikebreaking tactics just as a cascade of forces — deregulation, the outsourcing of factory work abroad and corporations’ increasing focus on maximizing shareholders’ wealth — ate away at workers’ job security. 

    The N.L.R.A. was unequal to the task of protecting them. When workers voted to start a union, it became routine for companies to contest the validity of the results, delaying certification for years. Nearly 20% of union organizers are fired during organizing activities – like those at McDonalds and Amazon.  

    Sources
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/01/amazon-instacart-workers-strike/
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/19/magazine/labor-law-unions.html
    https://www.propublica.org/article/trumps-labor-department-eviscerates-workplace-safety-panels

  • Just the Facts – Unions

     Contributed by Olga Vanucci.

    • Fifty years ago, nearly a third of U.S. workers belonged to a union. Today, it’s one in 10.
    • On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 13% more in wages.
    • Unions have transformed once-low-wage jobs in hospitality, nursing, and janitorial services into positions with living wages.
    • When the share of workers who are union members is relatively high, wages of nonunion workers are higher.
    • Union members are 18% more likely to vote in presidential elections than non-members, 43% more likely to volunteer for an election campaign, and 73-93% more likely to participate in protests.

    Sources:  https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-union-membership-in-one-map

    and https://www.epi.org/publication/how-todays-unions-help-working-people-giving-workers-the-power-to-improve-their-jobs-and-unrig-the-economy/