Bill Scher: A United Middle-Class. Eeek!

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:




A United Middle-Class. Eeek!
By Bill Scher

March 3rd, 2009 - 4:51pm ET




The SEIU has a brilliant new video skewering corporate executives and lobbyists pathetically trying to stoke panic around the Employee Free Choice Act, which will simply give employees the power to decide how to approach the question of unionization: be it ballot election or petition.

Watch: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031003/united-middle-class-eek


All the hysteria attempts to tar EFCA as deeply destructive to the American economy. But as the Workplace Prof Blog noted following a recent Wall Street Journal article: "What I find striking is that most of the economists quoted are pretty measured and speak only about some general effects."

Further, Ezra Klein astutely observed that strengthening workers with the help of EFCA would not alter how much the American grows, but how we grow:

...the last great leap forward for unions was during World War II, and the last great expansion of the American middle class followed in its aftermath. In contrast, the most recent expansions -- which have largely occurred in the absence of unions -- have benefited America's rich.

Unions do not change economic growth, or at least there's little convincing evidence that they do. The countries with the world's highest growth rates -- the Nordic economies -- also have some of the world's highest rates of unionization. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland all approach 80 percent. Rather, unions change the distribution of economic growth. They direct more of it to the middle class and less of it to the executive class. The past few years have been an economy driven by the executive class. The question is whether that's what we want the next expansion to look like, also.

.................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009031003/united-middle-class-eek