The Value Of Unions - Even If You Don't Belong To One

Kevin Drum has a must read article up at Mother Jones. In said article, he discusses what the economy and political structure of America would look like if the unions had maintained the density level that they enjoyed in 1973, especially in regards to income inequality.  First he provides this chart which clearly displays how much we've lost financially with the decline in unions:

He then gives us this analysis and ominous prognosis:

Western and Rosenfeld's explanation for this is similar to Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's in Winner-Take-All Politics, last year's best book on modern political economy. Roughly speaking, there's a direct economic effect of unionization on wages, but there's also an effect of unions on the political system that indirectly affects wages. Western and Rosenfeld put it like this:

[Our] analysis suggests that unions helped shape the allocation of wages not just for their members, but across the labor market. The decline of US labor and the associated increase in wage inequality signaled the deterioration of the labor market as a political institution.…The de-politicization of the US labor market appears self-reinforcing: as organized labor’s political power dissipates, economic interests in the labor market are dispersed and policymakers have fewer incentives to strengthen unions or otherwise equalize economic rewards.

…[Prior to 1973,] unions offered an alternative to an unbridled market logic, and this institutional alternative employed over a third of all male private sector workers. The social experience of organized labor bled into nonunion sectors, contributing to greater equality overall. As unions declined, not only did the logic of the market encroach on what had been the union sector, but the logic of the market deepened in the nonunion sector, too, contributing to the rise in wage inequality.

In other words, deunionization has allowed income inequality to rise partly because unions are negotiating wages for fewer people than they used to, and partly because unions no longer have the power to force the political system to pay attention to the needs of the middle class. But if income inequality has to be reduced in order for middle class wages to grow—and it does—and if robust middle class wages are a key driver of the liberal project—and they are—then we're all in big trouble. Mass unionization is gone, and it's not coming back. This means we still need something to take its place, and we still don't have it. Until we do, the progressive movement will continue to tread water.

Like I said, ominous. But I wouldn't be so hasty to say that the unions will never come back. There's no telling how far the pendulum will swing back in the union's favor, but it's definitely swinging back.