Oh, look. Another chart showing how declining union membership goes hand in hand with the declining strength of the middle class. Shall we look at
some more specifics?
- Collective bargaining raises the wages and benefits more for low-wage workers than for middle-wage workers and least for white-collar workers, thereby lessening wage inequality.
- Collective bargaining also raises wages and benefits more for black, Asian, Hispanic, and immigrant workers, thereby lessening race/ethnic wage gaps.
- The decline of unions has affected middle-wage men more than any other group and explains about three-fourths of the expanded wage gap between white- and blue-collar men and over a fifth of the expanded wage gap between high school– and college-educated men from 1978 to 2011.
- The states where collective bargaining eroded the most since 1979 had the lowest growth in middle-class wages and the largest gap between rising productivity growth and middle-class wage growth.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- How we can hold companies that use sweatshop labor accountable.
- Hey, what do you know. Prevailing wage laws are good not just for construction workers but for the whole economy.
- A push for a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in Connecticut.
- The Seattle restaurant industry is doing fine despite all the claims about how a minimum wage increase would be a killer.
- Nebraska becomes the latest state with a Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. That makes 13.
- A union at Gawker? Hamilton Nolan explains why workers there are starting to organize:
Every workplace could use a union. A union is the only real mechanism that exists to represent the interests of employees in a company. A union is also the only real mechanism that enables employees to join together to bargain collectively, rather than as a bunch of separate, powerless entities. This is useful in good times (which our company enjoys now), and even more in bad times (which will inevitably come).
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- Glass ceiling? Some of us are still trying to earn a living wage.
- A setback for Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's anti-union agenda.
- The cheerleader rights bill being pushed by California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez made it through a committee vote.
- Good news for Harvard hotel workers:
Following a campaign of more than two years that included demonstrations, a strike, and a boycott, workers at the Soldiers Field Road DoubleTree Hotel, a Hilton Hotels enterprise housed in a building owned by Harvard, have organized with the UNITE HERE! Local 26 union, according to workers and union representatives.
On Friday, an arbitrator verified with both union and hotel management that a majority of the hotel’s workers had voted in favor of unionization, according to Local 26 president Brian Lang.
- New York's attorney general is taking aim at abusive last-minute scheduling practices by major retailers.
- Workers Independent News union economy newsdesk:
Education
- For-profit Corinthian Colleges fined for bogus job placement claims. This is just one example of why education issues are labor issues.
- White parents in North Carolina are using charter schools to secede from integrated schools:
By 2014, a fifth of charter schools were overwhelmingly — more than 90 percent — white. In 1998, less than 10 percent of charters were that way.
- Gee, why does corporate education organization StudentsFirst have to turn to astroturfing to get its message out? It has tons and tons of money from rich people and their foundations ... maybe the problem is it doesn't have real grassroots support.