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According to a recent study by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, New England has the highest increase in income disparity in the nation. In the last decade, household average real income declined for the lowest income families. ?Income disparity increased in New England more than in any region in the nation.? Meanwhile, mid-range incomes grew less than national counterparts. In short, working families are struggling to keep up while the rich are getting richer.
So, the PR attack on unions for being Anti-American and against freedom is surprising and disingenuous. In a state where working families are quickly becoming working poor, the people opposing this bill should know that unions created the middle class in this country. (In all likelihood they do know this fact, but their greed prevents them from giving proper credit when it is due).
Sixty million of America?s workers say they would form a union tomorrow if given the chance. After all, a union card is the single best ticket to the middle class in this nation. Workers with a union earn 30 percent more than those who don?t, and are much more likely to have employer-provided health care and retirement benefits.
The share of private-sector workers who have unions has fallen to an historic low. The decline in the percentage of people in unions corresponds directly to the erosion of the value of work. Young working people can expect to make less today than their parents did at the same age. High-school educated workers aged 25-29 just entering the labor force in 2000 earned about $5,000 less real income that year than similarly aged and educated workers in 1970 and face slower earnings growth than their predecessors.
Similarly, it was around the 1970s that the steady erosion of legal protection for workers who want to form unions really escalated. Combine a weakened law with intimidating and illegal tactics and the pattern becomes clear. A recent review of 113 cases, which the corporate-backed HR Policy Association claims involved fraud or coercion in the signing of union authorization forms, found that there were actually only 42 cases since the Act?s inception in 1935 in which there was such coercion or fraud. That?s less than one case per year. Compare that to the 31,358 cases in 2005 (one year alone) in which employers had to pay back pay to workers in connection with cases involving illegal firings or other discrimination against workers for exercising their federally protected labor law rights. That?s a ratio of over 30,000 to 1.
Simply put: Workers don?t form unions because in reality they are not allowed to. The law is helpless to intervene.
The Employee Free Choice Act, a bill currently being debated in the Senate, would enact new penalties when employers roll rough shod over workers? rights. It puts teeth back into labor law by providing real penalties for illegal acts by employers. It also gives workers the choice of how they will vote for their union -through a majority sign up process or through a National Labor Relations Board-sponsored election. Today, it?s the employer, not the worker, who gets to make that choice.
Working people want unions. Our communities ? and our country -need them. We need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to restore workers? freedom to form unions to bargain for a better life. The 2006 elections showed how fed up working families were with the anti-worker, anti-middle class, pro-big business, pro-big oil agenda of the last six years. Working families expect their representatives to listen to what we need. The Employee Free Choice Act will help turn the tide for working families. Senators Sununu and Gregg should show their support for it instead of siding with their political donors.
This much is certain, both union and non-union workers have come to the realization that the best path for regaining a place in the American dream and to breathe new life into the once vibrant middle-class is through the voting booth. The next elections will be very interesting, indeed.
What is left of the hungry dog working middle-class is reason enough for Sununu to give a serious try at breaking away from the tight lease and choking collar the fat cats have around his neck.
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