The continued importance of unions
The report indicates that if California workers were compensated for 100 percent of their productivity gains since 1980, the average wage would be more than 30 dollars an hour, or 40 percent higher than the average real wage in 2007.
The following is from the LIVING WAGE COALITION OF SONOMA COUNTY website in California.
The excerpt shows the real price of the neoliberal model in terms of social justice and fair distribution of society’s wealth, towards those who really produce it.
Martin J. Bennett:
“A new study released by the Center for American Progress, an independent and progressive think tank, reveals that during the first several decades after World War II productivity gains and worker pay increased together. Between 1947 and 1974 both productivity and median family income roughly doubled. This also was a period when unions were relatively strong. In the mid-1950s nearly 40 percent of California workers were union members.
Beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating during the 1980s, workers experienced a ‘great disconnect’ between productivity and wages. In California the report demonstrates that between 1980 and 2007 worker productivity grew by 70 percent while inflation-adjusted wages increased by just 21 percent. Simultaneously, by 2007 union membership in the state slipped to only 18 percent of the work force.
The report indicates that if California workers were compensated for 100 percent of their productivity gains since 1980, the average wage would be more than 30 dollars an hour, or 40 percent higher than the average real wage in 2007.
Clearly productivity gains have not been widely shared.
This is one of the main reasons why labor, environmental, civil rights, and religious organizations across the nation have joined together to support the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that will remove major barriers to union organizing and help to rebuild the middle class.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, unions raise wages by 28 percent on average. Moreover, union workers are much more likely to receive comprehensive medical and retirement benefits. The total union advantage for wages and benefits combined is 44 percent more than nonunion.”