The Digest: No. Share Twitter LinkedIn Email. Also in this issue:. Are Health Insurance Markets Competitive? A Tale of Two Islands. Social Security, Retirement, and Youth Employment. Coverage under Medicare Part D. Alan J. Auerbach, the Robert D. In contrast, Overall, Not all employers oppose unions.
Some unions featured in this report were voluntarily recognized by employers, and some led campaigns in which the employer provided union organizers with free access to employees. But often, when private-sector workers seek to organize and bargain collectively, employers hire union avoidance consultants to orchestrate and roll out anti-union campaigns.
Finally, the Department of Labor is working to repeal a rule that prohibits employers from keeping the work of anti-union consultants a secret. Workers wrongly classified as independent contractors are also deprived of the right to unionize under U. These workers are thus unable to join together in a union to negotiate better terms and conditions with their employer. Misclassification is rampant in many industries such as food services and construction.
The practice contributes to an economy where wages are flat, profits are soaring, and companies that do not arrange their businesses to avoid their employment responsibilities are disadvantaged. Unions provide a range of tangible benefits to their members, from contract and benefit administration and enforcement to legal services. These services cost money. Rather, right-to-work laws simply prohibit contracts that require all workers who benefit from union representation to help pay for these benefits.
Fair share fees are just that. Under federal law, no one can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. However, unions are required to represent all members of a bargaining unit, whether or not they are in the union.
Nonunion workers also receive the higher wages and benefits their union coworkers enjoy. RTW laws weaken unions by eroding union funding and membership Figure D shows union density, as measured by shares of workers covered by collective bargaining, in RTW and fair share states. Proponents of RTW laws say they boost investment and job growth but there is no serious evidence of that. While causal impacts of RTW laws are hard to estimate with statistical precision, there is ample evidence that RTW laws hurt all workers—not just union members.
Notes: Union density is measured as share of workers covered by collective bargaining. Six states have right-to-work laws that were enacted in the last five years in or later : Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, and West Virginia. When state budget deficits increased after the Great Recession, business-backed governors in a number of states sought to curb the powers of public-sector unions by arguing that government unions were to blame.
In the public sector, there is a similar attack on collective bargaining playing out in the courts. In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education U. The Court held that public-sector employees who elect not to join the union may be charged a fee to cover the cost of collective bargaining and contract administration. Fair share fees may not be used to support union political activities. These fair share fees ensure that all workers represented by the union pay their fair share of the cost of that representation.
In , the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association which, among other things, addressed whether Abood should be overruled and public-sector fair share fee arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment.
On March 29, , the Supreme Court affirmed Abood by an equally divided 4—4 split. One of those cases, Janus v. Unions are a dynamic and ever-evolving institution of the American economy that exist to give working people a voice and leverage over their working conditions and the economic policy decisions that shape these conditions. Collective bargaining is indispensable if we want to achieve shared prosperity. But it is precisely because they are effective and necessary for shared prosperity that unions are under attack by employers who want to maintain excessive leverage over workers and by policymakers representing the interests of the top 1 percent.
These attacks have succeeded in increasing the gap between the number of workers who would like to be represented by a union and the number who are represented by a union. Giving workers a real voice and leverage is essential for democracy. While unions historically have not been able to match corporate political donations dollar for dollar, working people organizing together in unions play an equalizing role because they can motivate members to give their time and effort to political causes.
For example, one study found that unions are very effective at getting people to the polls—especially increasing voting among those with only a high school education. As this report has shown, unions—when strong—have the capacity to tackle some of the biggest problems that plague our economy, from growing economic inequality, wage stagnation, and racial and gender inequities to eroding democracy and barriers to civic participation.
Certainly, Americans of all ages, occupations, races, and genders have a vested interest in making sure our economy works for everyone. To promote an inclusive economy and a robust democracy, we must work together to rebuild our collective bargaining system. We are also thankful to Krista Faries for her excellent copy editing and to Margaret Poydock for laying out the report. The right of labor unions to gather is given under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects the right to exercise freedom of speech in peaceful protest.
The U. Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act NLRA in to protect the rights of employers and employees, including the right to form, join, or assist labor organizations and to bargain collectively. Americans of all ages broadly support the ability of workers in various sectors to unionize, with shares supporting unions ranging from 62 percent to 82 percent, depending on the sector.
In there were The share of workers who belonged to a union was Non-Hispanic white men make up As of , there are The breakdowns by race and ethnicity, gender, and occupations in this section focus on workers age 18 to 64 who are represented by a union, as do our estimates of union wage premiums advantages discussed later in the paper. Certain residual formulas in the pay TV and the subscription video-on-demand SVOD industries needed to be increased because they did not adequately reflect the value of the content created by WGA members.
The WGA health fund had been running a deficit due to the rapid inflation in health care costs, and the WGA determined that the period of record profitability for the studios and networks was a good time to reverse the current trend to deficits with additional employer contributions. The National Labor Relations Board in reversed an earlier decision and ruled that graduate students could unionize in the private sector. The classic reference for the union impact on inequality, and many other matters, is Richard B.
Freeman and James l. Medoff, What Do Unions Do? New York: Basic Books, Also see Brantly Callaway and William J.
Press, , Table 4. From to , productivity rose The regression-based gap controls for gender, race and ethnicity, education, experience, geographic division, major occupation and industry, and citizenship. The log of the hourly wage is the dependent variable. The gap uses a five-year average of wages from to There are three groups of workers whose wages have been affected by the decline of unionization.
First, there are the remaining union members, who according to research have experienced a decline in the earnings premium that comes from belonging to a union—a decline especially large for female members. For instance, the union wage premium fell over the to period by nearly a third for private-sector women. The estimates referenced are from Figure 3. Press, Workers not covered by unions—those who are neither in a union themselves nor covered by a union contract—are almost twice as likely 4.
Union density is the share of workers in similar industries and regions who are union members. For the The effects of union decline on the wages of nonunion women are not as substantial because women were not as likely to be unionized as men were in The 10 states that had the least erosion of collective bargaining saw their inflation-adjusted median hourly compensation grow by The 10 states that had the most erosion of collective bargaining saw their inflation-adjusted median hourly compensation grow by 5.
Erosion is measured by the percentage-point decline in the share of workers in the state covered by a collective bargaining contract. Valerie Wilson and William M. The regression analysis producing this estimate controlled for education, experience, race, citizenship status, geographic division, industry, and occupation.
Other economists disagree. To answer this question, my colleagues Richard Freeman and Patrice Laroche and I surveyed the global evidence from more than studies on the economic impact of unionisation.
We conclude that unions do not, overall, reduce productivity, though it varies according to specific circumstances. Unionisation does make businesses less profitable for the owners. But importantly, it also reduces income inequality, a useful social function given the problems that flow from a widening wealth gap. Productivity refers to the efficiency of turning inputs into outputs.
The evidence from Australia is too thin to draw a credible conclusion there are just a handful of studies , so our overall findings reflect evidence from other nations. That evidence is mixed. In Britain, for example, union influence has reduced company productivity. In the US, unionisation appears to be associated with higher productivity in the construction and education sectors, but has made no difference in manufacturing.
In developing countries, the overall effect is generally positive. Such differences can be explained by variations in labour market institutions.
These include employment protections, minimum wages and unemployment benefits.
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