Middle-Class Decline Mirrors The Fall Of Unions In One Chart

[Coyotl]

Middle-Class Decline Mirrors The Fall Of Unions In One Chart
The Huffington Post | By Caroline Fairchild Posted: 09/18/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/union-membership-middle-class-income_n_3948543.html

This week the Census Bureau reported the latest depressing decline in middle-class incomes during the so-called economic recovery. But it may have missed an important factor in this story.

A report on Wednesday from the left-leaning think tank Center For American Progress notes that as middle-class incomes have steadily fallen, so have union membership rates. The middle 60 percent of households earned 53.2 percent of national income in 1968. That number has fallen to just 45.7 percent. During that same period, nationwide union membership fell from 28.3 percent to a record-low 11.3 percent of all workers.

Put these two economic trends together, and a striking image appears:



.....

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Problem is, one of the most basic statistical errors is not...

defining causality.

They may have gone down with each other, but that proves nothing without some sort of causal link. For instance, the pay of office jobs, historically non-union, has risen little and at times gone down.

[LostOne4Ever]

2. K&R!

Unions are the reason we have a 40hour work week, safe working conditions, child labor laws, overtime pay and many many other benefits we take for granted today. They have done so much for this country that it should surprise no one that the decline of the middle class reflects the decline of unions!

[BainsBane]

3. I knew this was the case

but it's great to see evidence to back it up.

[uponit7771]

4. Makes a lot of sense, no one to voice the middle classes opinion and "Trickle Down" economic mindset

...rules the day

[coldmountain]

5. Lot of people sleeping in those non union cars they bought

[Populist_Prole]

6. Pithy graph. Saved for reference

I'll also bet the decline of working class incomes also coincides with a lot of other metrics of conservative and neoliberal policies.

[SheilaT]

7. I get so angry at those who trash unions.

I hear it all the time: Oh, unions have done some good but they have exceeded their bounds.

Listen up everyone. If it were not for unions you'd be working 60 hours a week at minimum wage, and with no benefits of any kind. That minimum wage, as pitiful as it is, is even the $7.25 hour is in no small part thanks to unions. It would probably be a whole lot more if unions had the strength they did 50 years ago.

I was an airline ticket agent from 1969 to 1979. Even though my employee area was not unionized, we benefitted enormously from the strong unions that existed then in the airline industry. If we worked more than 8 hours in a given day, we got overtime, meaning time and a half for those hours over 8, even if we didn't go over 40 in the week. If we were called in to work for any reason whatsoever, we got four hours of pay, even if we were there for less than four hours. More than once I benefitted from those rules. It meant that I earned a decent wage in those years.

Everyone, every single person who has trashed the unions, is a part of why wages and benefits are so crappy these days.

I am hoping that unions will experience a resurgence, that rank and file employees (and THAT'S an old union phrase, rank and file) will understand how important collective bargaining is.

[Coyotl]

9. ^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^

[JohnnyRingo]

8. Thanx for posting

I suspected the trajectory of the two coincided, but I've never actually seen a chart.

I'm a UAW retiree who's pension was saved whan Obama bailed GM.

[Romulox]

10. But did I tell you about the cool features on my KIA SOUL???? nt

[Coyotl]

11. But did I tell you about the cool features on my Chevy????

It comes with an inflated price tag because the USA does not have universal health care!