University of Washington sociologist Jake Rosenfeld's research showing that
declining union membership contributes to rising income inequality has been out for a few years now, in an
American Sociological Review article co-authored with Harvard University sociologist Bruce Western. But with the publication of Rosenfeld's book,
What Unions No Longer Do, it's getting renewed attention.
Rosenfeld's research has produced something of an epiphany in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. To show that he's a serious opinion producer of appropriately upper-middle-class values, Kristof lists the various union abuses (supposed and real) that had made him oppose unions. But: "I was wrong," he writes. Not only has he figured out that "in recent years, the worst abuses by far haven’t been in the union shop but in the corporate suite," but:
... the decline of unions may account for one-third of the rise of inequality among men.
“To understand the rising inequality, you have to understand the devastation in the labor movement,” says Jake Rosenfeld, a labor expert at the University of Washington and the author of “What Unions No Longer Do.”
Take construction workers. A full-time construction worker earns about $10,000 less per year now than in 1973, in today’s dollars, according to Rosenfeld. One reason is probably that the proportion who are unionized has fallen in that period from more than 40 percent to just 14 percent.
“All the focus on labor’s flaws can distract us from the bigger picture,” Rosenfeld writes. “For generations now the labor movement has stood as the most prominent and effective voice for economic justice.”
As such, the union movement's strength—or weakness—matters for us all, union and non-union, as a force against rising inequality and the reorientation of the economy to serving those at the very top. This should have long been obvious based on the most cursory look at the shape of the American economy, but apparently it takes people with fancy degrees to convince people with fancy
New York Times columns.