Mainstream Populist Democrats: How Unions Can Help Restore the Middle Class

[Omaha Steve]

http://populistdemocrats.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-unions-can-help-restore-middle.html

Fighting for America's working families
Saturday, March 21, 2009
How Unions Can Help Restore the Middle Class



The following testimony on the importance of unions to restoring a solid middle class was given to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday, March 10, by Dr. Paula B. Voos, a professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, and an Economic Policy Institute research associate.

Thank you for the invitation to speak today. I am pleased to have the opportunity to consider the role unions can play in rebuilding the American middle class, a matter of utmost importance not only for ending the current economic downturn, but also for our nation in the longer term. As an economist, I have been studying the role unions play in our economy for some time and in 1993-94, I had the opportunity to serve on the Dunlop Commission in its consideration of how labor law should be modernized to serve the “Future of Worker Management Relations in the United States.”

There is now a substantial body of research evidence on the economic impact of U.S. unions. Unions typically:

- Raise the wages of the employees they represent;

- Increase the fringe benefits of those same employees, usually by a greater extent than they increase wages;

- Reduce income inequality within the represented firm, by reducing differentials between low-paid and high-paid employees, men and women, various racial/ethnic groups, younger and older employees, and so forth;

- Increase pay of nonunion workers in occupations and industries with substantial union presence as nonunion employers move closer to union standards;

- Reduce income inequality in the wider society by reducing inequality not only within and between represented firms, but also across entire industries as nonunion employers increase compensation to discourage unionization, all of which strengthens the middle class (Card, Lemieux, and Riddell, 2007).

- Reduce employee turnover by lessening the number of quits (voluntary separations); and

- Thus increase the retention of skilled employees, enhancing human capital and productivity in both the firm and the economy as a whole;

(See Freeman and Medoff, 1984; Bennett and Kaufman, 2007).

Furthermore:


FULL story at link.