By Laurie Bergner
I still remember the first time I attended our local Labor Day parade, many many years ago. I was struck by how different many workers we have in our society. Plumbers, electricians, construction workers, restaurant workers, firefights and police…I could spend the rest of this forum enumerating them. The point is, our laborers form the backbone of our society, our community. And yet, as we all know, they are the people who are not fully participating in our economic prosperity. Study after study has shown that they are the groups left out of wage increases. Businesses and many state governments fight hard to decrease the power of unions, and they are succeeding. Over the last 40 years, private sector union membership has slid by more than half, from a third to just 6.7%! At the same time, the percentage of workers in the middle class has shrunk by more than 10 percentage points, putting it at less than 50 percent.
There has always been the fight between business and unions. Obviously business, whose mission is profit, sees unions as decreasing their profits by negotiating higher wages. But taking a step back, it’s pretty obvious that our society needs both strong business AND a strong middle class. Yet, in the last several decades, as unions have lost members and power, so has our middle class decreased as workers’ wages have not kept up with the profits that businesses have made. There is widespread agreement that there is more and more polarization in our prosperity, with a shrinking middle class, an increasing lower class, and more and more money being concentrated in the small upper class. And study after study has attributed a healthy chunk of the reason to the declining power of unions.
What is sad and frustrating for me is the continued thinking that business and unions must be enemies. A strong workforce may reduce some profits somewhat, but there are also many advantages for business that are not taken account of. Higher wages and benefits lead to the ability to attract higher quality workers, and it reduces turnover, which is expensive for business. States that have strong unions, such as New York, tend to extend more worker-friendly policies, like mandating paid sick leave to hourly workers. Additionally, they have kept alive the movement to increase the minimum wage.
Business is doing well in the United States. A look at history shows us that they don’t have to do it by keeping wages and benefits low. In our best economy, back in the 60s and 70s, unions and their membership was much stronger, and still business did very well.
A strong society has strength in ALL its groups – business AND labor. Of course we need strong business, but we also need a strong and vibrant workforce. And yes, it’s not a perfect world; there isn’t a perfect win-win solution to everything. Some businesses will decrease profits if worker wages and benefits increase, and some small businesses may not survive. But we have so skewed our society, passing laws that help the rich and declare war on workers, that we’ve become imbalanced. It’s overtime to rebalance.
Laurie Bergner is a clinical psychologist in private practice, working with individual adults, families and couples. She also works with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters, helping organize candidates forums, educational programs, and many issues in the field of law and justice. She has received many recognitions in both fields, including YWCA’s Women of Distinction in the Professions, Leaguer of the Year, LWV Special Project Awards, and the LWV of Illinois’s prestigious Carrie Chapman Catt award. Laurie has a wonderful husband and two grown children – also wonderful. She loves biking in the countryside, reading, and traveling.
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