Want to reverse income inequality? Join a union

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

By Dana Milbank

I am proud to be a card carrying member of Local 32035 of the Communications Workers of America.

It was not always thus. The Washington Post is an open shop, and I dropped my membership several years ago when the union was encouraging readers to cancel their subscriptions to protest some management action. I didn't see much sense in paying dues to accelerate the destruction of the newspaper business.

I don't expect to gain much personally from rejoining the union faithful, because I'm in the top decile of American wage earners that has prospered in recent years. I signed up because income inequality, after years of worsening, has reached a crisis — and the decline in union membership is partly to blame. Rejoining the labor movement is my small, symbolic protest.

The gap in wealth and income between rich and poor is the worst since the Great Depression, and the gap between the rich and the middle class is at its highest since the government began keeping such statistics 30 years ago. After more than three decades of income growth for the wealthiest 10 percent and stagnation for everybody else, the top 3 percent now have more than twice as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

And Americans are angry about it. The percentage of Americans who believe you can get ahead through hard work has declined about 15 points over the last 15 years, according to polling by Gallup and the Pew Research Center.

There are many causes of growing inequality — globalization, education disparities, tax policy — but an International Monetary Fund study released in March found that the decline in union membership has been responsible for half of the rise in the share of income going to the top 10 percent of earners in advanced economies between 1980 and 2010. Declining union membership, by weakening the bargaining power of low- and middle-income workers at both union and nonunion businesses, has increased the share of wealth going to corporate higher-ups and shareholders.

-more-

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20150526/OPINION04/150529666

[TexasProgresive]

1. I think that's a good idea.

I've often thought that people who work in non-union jobs should be recruited by the unions. Even though the unions can't bargain for them they could represent them in other ways. I don't think that these auxiliary members should pay full dues but say $10 a year or maybe a bit more to cover newsletter mailings.

It's probably not allowed by what the heck. Remember the Mollies and Joe Hill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Maguires