Excellent economist David Cay Johnston has just written a great
article comparing inequality and the plight of working families coming out of the Great Depression to our era coming out of the Great Recession.
“The 90 percent, the vast majority, saw their income decline in 2012 compared with 2009, the year the Great Recession officially ended. Average annual income was down $556, or almost 2 percent, adjusted for inflation, to $30,997.”
In fact, virtually the only ones in the 90 percent who continue to see increases are union members.
That is why unions are so critical to our struggle against inequality. There simply is no formula to significantly reduce inequality that doesn’t include growing and strengthening America’s unions and the right of American workers to join them.
Of course we also know unions are essential to our democracy. It is no accident that Hitler destroyed German unions in 1933. Unions have been part of every social advancement in American history, and that like Hitler, the Plutocratic Koch boys and their crowd are doing all they can to destroy unions.
Photo source: Ramona du Houx