Posts tagged Labor Day
This Labor Day, ask yourself: Are unions living up to their promises?
September 4, 2023 // Good people across the country may believe that handing more power to public sector union executives will fix teacher shortages or improve ineffective government programs. Instead, these good people should reflect this Labor Day and ask themselves whether public sector unions have lived up to these promises over the past 50 years. They should also ask how we can hold union executives accountable and improve how public sector unions work. Unfortunately, anyone trying to advance ideas to improve public sector unions soon discovers union executives aren’t interested. Public sector union executives will go to war to ensure they keep their power — even at the expense of the employees they purportedly represent.
10 biggest labor strikes in U.S. history
September 4, 2023 //
Elisabeth Messenger: Where Do Your Union Dues Go?
September 1, 2023 // I think when a union can stay very independent and hyper-local, it can be what it was meant to be, and that is a force to speak for all, to help all, to protect all, to raise all at the same time. But again, it’s only when it’s independent it’s not tied to a national, bloated corporate union. And it’s only when it’s at the local level.
Labor Day 2023: Here’s a principled way for workers ‘to make their own choices’
September 1, 2023 // The best way to help workers and families is to remove barriers to their freedom and opportunity, instead of erecting new ones. That means empowering workers to make more of their own choices instead of letting bureaucrats and union officials control what they earn, where they work, and how our economy functions. Workers don’t need more leaders who advocate the failed ideas of the past. They deserve leaders who respect their role as the protagonists in their own and their families’ lives and will deliver better jobs, bigger paychecks, and a brighter future.
Labor leader Shuler touts union support as possible auto strikes loom
September 1, 2023 // Unions would support President Joe Biden in his reelection campaign next year, Shuler said, praising the president’s work to deliver federal infrastructure spending. Biden campaigned on infrastructure improvements and supported the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law Congress passed in 2021. The law supports millions of jobs, she said, not only in construction and transportation but in the service industry as well. Every job created by the federal spending should be a union position, Shuler said.
Commentary: Shrinking labor unions flex their muscles
August 23, 2023 // Clearly, labor unions are flexing their muscles. But every year, a smaller percentage of workers belong to a union. That’s especially true for those in the private sector. Membership is down from 10.3 percent in 2021 to 10.1 percent last year, making it the lowest on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The percentage of union workers has nearly been cut in half since 1983, when 20.1 percent were represented. And it’s been dropping faster than that in the private sector. Government employees now make up one third of all union members. Law enforcement officers, firefighters, teachers and library employees have the highest percentages of union workers. Those workers earn, on average, 15 percent more than workers not in a union.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom approves farmworker unionization law
September 30, 2022 // The new law will allow farmworkers who provide much of the nation's fruits and vegetables to vote by mail in union elections as an alternative to physical locations. Proponents say that would help protect workers from union busting and other intimidation, while owners say such a system lacks necessary safeguards to prevent fraud. It will give owners a choice between “a flawed mail-ballot scheme or ... an unsupervised card-check scheme,” said the California Farm Bureau Federation in opposition before Newsom announced the agreement on additional safeguards. Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong,
Support for labor unions has increased, but union membership is at an all-time low
September 9, 2022 // Harvard Business School also keeps data on union membership in countries around the world, since the late 19th century. Since their data goes back even further than the BLS data, we can see that the all-time peak for union membership was in the mid-1960s, when it exceeded 30 percent. Like the BLS data, Harvard’s figures show the percentage of the workforce in a union has been steadily declining for decades, and has recently reached lows not seen since before World War II.
The Americans Who Never Went Back to Work After the Pandemic
September 6, 2022 // Padded by transfer payments, disposable income in America spiked in 2020 and 2021, reaching previously unattained heights despite the economic crisis. And after the initial steep but temporary plunge in consumer spending from the Covid shock, the stimulus-funded rebound pushed consumer demand well above its pre-Covid trend line. Americans actually had more money in their pockets during pandemic emergency years than they cared to spend—so their savings rates doubled. In 2020 and 2021, a windfall of more than $2.5 trillion in extra savings was bestowed by Washington on private households through borrowed public funds. That nest egg could supplement earnings—or substitute for them.
Union drives are spiking, but it’s still a ‘drop in the bucket,’ annual report finds
September 6, 2022 // New union drives are spiking, but the overall number of workers represented by unions hasn’t budged in New York City or nationwide, according to an annual report released by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies ahead of Labor Day. New union elections surged nationwide during the second quarter of 2022, up to 685 drives, a 49% increase from the previous quarter, and nearly three times as many as the second quarter of 2020 — the depths of COVID-19 when union elections unsurprisingly came to a grinding halt. The number of recent drives, however, was on par with levels seen in 2016 and lower than many years before that. Ruth Milkman,