Huff Post: New Report Reveals Why GOP Hates Unions: They Raise Wages, Boost Economy

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/new-report-reveals-why-go_b_168132.html


Art Levine

Contributing editor of The Washington Monthly
Posted February 19, 2009 | 04:47 AM (EST)


The Hoover-like GOP has been working overtime to oppose President Obama's stimulus package while hoping he fails. Meanwhile, a report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund essentially underscores the real reasons Republicans and the business community have taken another equally short-sighted economic stance: fighting workers' right to organize. As Unions Are Good For the American Economy points out with irrefutable statistics, unionization raises wages and boosts the economy because it puts more money in the pockets of American workers.

(The report itself, of course, doesn't directly accuse the GOP and corporate interests of opposing economic growth and recovery, but reading its measured analysis of the economic benefit of unions leads to the inescapable conclusion that anti-union business leaders have a misguided zeal for low wages at all cost -- regardless of the impact on their own workers, their firms' productivity, their own long-term profits or the broader economy.)

In a conference call with reporters to discuss the report, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich observed: "One reason we're in the crisis we're in is because consumers have run out of money....If they can't borrow anymore, and they have to rely on sinking wages, the entire economy is in trouble, because there's not enough demand out there." Reich added, "The point of the Employee Free Choice Act is to end intimidation and allow workers to join unions as they have a right to do. Workers want to be in unions , and if they did have unions, they'd have higher wages and benefits. And if they had higher wags and benefits, they'd have the purchasing power to buy more goods and services."

In fact, the relative stagnation of wages over the last few decades -- due in large part to effective unionbusting aimed at keeping labor costs low -- helped bring on the economic meltdown because too many low-income workers were suckered into mortgages they really couldn't afford. Those mortgages were in turn bundled into the "toxic assets" -- those various nearly-worthless investment vehicles -- that have weakened the world's financial systems and brought on our free-fall recession. As Daily Kos diarist Trapper John reported last year, "AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon Silvers lays out how the decline in unionization which began in the mid-Seventies led to the burst of the sub-prime bubble, and ultimately to today's recession. And he wrote it way back in April."

In contrast, this new Center for American Progress report points out, if unionization rates today were the same as they were in 1983, an additional $49 billion could be pumped into the economy by workers represented by unions. As the report co-authored by David Madland and Karla Walter says, "In 1983, 23.3 percent of American workers were either members of a union or represented by a union at their workplace. By 2008, that portion declined to 13.7 percent." And, as Reich and the report noted, "Workers in unions earn 30% higher than non-union workers."

As Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work, observed during the conference call: "A union job transforms a low-wage job into a good job" -- and a pathway to the middle-class. And those workers will be able come into showrooms, real estate offices, auto dealerships and stores across America to start buying again and paying down-payments for a home. Shulman quoted a grocery store worker who joined a union, Linda, telling her, "For the first time, I can dream for my child," and who started putting away money for her child's college education. "Having unionization gives people a stake in the American dream," Shulman said.

FULL story at link.

[2Design]

1. We didn't need a report - reagan started it and Bush accelerated

it and the NCLB is aimed at breaking up education unions and that is what vouchers are all about and this uaw thing - the ceos take all they want and they want the wages and benefits of these guys who could not possibly get a job somewhere else making the same money since everything requires a college degree to earn 7-10 dollars an hour

[Luminous Animal]

2. I love a good union story....

The cheap labor conservatives have done a swell job of demonizing unions that even many Democrats (quite a few of them on this board) blame failing schools, failing hospitals, and failing manufacturing on them.

There is a reason why the average worker in Europe enjoys more leisure and a healthier life than the average worker in the U.S.

[justgamma]

3. Henry Ford understood.

He paid his workers better and lessened the hours that they worked. When asked why he paid them so well, he replyed that if he didn't then who would be able to buy his cars.

[Luminous Animal]

4. He paid his workers better

to glean from the best workers of his competitors. Then he fired those who he thought were subpar. He instituted a program called the Sociological department to inspect the homes and leisure life of these $5 dollar workers, and those who were not up to snuff, were fired.

Henry Ford was a eugenics believing, Nazi supporting, union busting piece of shit who paid more, not out of benevolence, but rather with the desire to corner the market on the best workers and put his competitors out of business.

[Omaha Steve]

5. To the day crowd

Kick.

[bdamomma]

6. kick