http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/01/07/paul-krugman-strong-unions-create-a-strong-middle-class/Several of the links in the story didn't transfer over. Check the link.
Sheldon Friedman, AFL-CIO Voice@Work research coordinator, sent us this report.
Princeton economist and widely read New York Times columnist Paul Krugman spoke at the AFL-CIO breakfast during the annual meeting of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) in New Orleans on Saturday. Krugman has authored 20 books, including the most recently published The Conscience of a Liberal, in which he endorses the Employee Free Choice Act.
AFL-CIO Voice@Work Campaign Director Fred Azcarate opened the breakfast with a brief update on the fight for the Employee Free Choice Act and urged the more than 300 participants—academics, graduate students and labor representatives—to join with the union movement in the struggle to pass this vital workplace rights legislation.
Speaking on the topic, “Unions and Inequality,” Krugman noted the percentage of workers in unions declined from a high of 35 percent in the mid-1950s to today’s level of 12 percent. As a result, the United States has “lost something that’s essential to maintain a decent society.” Krugman attributes the nation’s worsening economic inequality in large part to declining unionization and the erosion of legal protection of workers’ freedom to choose unions and bargain. He cited a finding that one-third of the difference in the rise in earnings inequality between the United States and Canada is attributable to the much faster rate of decline of unionization in this country. In fact, he says even this dramatic finding almost certainly is a major underestimate.
Krugman explained that when a high percentage of workers are in unions and workers’ freedom to choose unions is protected, there is an “umbrella” effect in which all workers, union and nonunion, benefit. He cited work by economists Peter Temin and Frank Levy, who found that for a generation after World War II, the so-called “Treaty of Detroit” between the UAW and General Motors Corp. set standards for workers throughout the U.S. economy. (The Treaty of Detroit refers to the landmark contract the UAW negotiated after the war that has since been seen as the crowning achievement of the midcentury labor movement, with the largest automakers agreeing to generous benefit and compensation packages.) The bottom line, says Krugman:
To have a middle class society, you need a strong union movement.
FULL story at link.
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