really nails the point that the liberals' abandonment of the union movement (think Woody Allen comment on Al Shanker destroying the world when he got the bomb) has had a major impact.
We see that in the support of even liberal Democrats and celebrity liberals supporting charters and in the general assault on teacher unions. The tone and tenor of Nocera's article is a sign that the assault has gone so far it is beginning to turn against the assaulters. But the problem from out end is the loser -- we all want to cooperate-- mentality of our union leaders. When Nocera criticizes them in his piece it is from the wrong direction -- as if they were really fighting and not capitulating enough. He misses that point by a mile.
I would ask the question about Paul Krugman, the real liberal on the Times. He has been writing about many of the same issues but blames the Republicans and lets Obama and the Dems off the hook. And he says nothing about the ed assault on teachers by both parties. Let's hope both Krugman and Nocera begin to shine a light on that, especially given that Michael Winerip may be gone from the Times.
Turning Our Backs on Unions
By JOE NOCERA
“The Great Divergence”
by Timothy Noah is a book about income inequality, and if you’re
thinking, “Do we really need another book about income inequality?” the
answer is yes. We need this one.
It stands out in part because Noah, a columnist for The New Republic,
is not content to simply shake his fists at the heavens in anger. He
spends exactly one chapter on what he calls the “rise of the stinking
rich” — that is, the explosion in executive pay and what he calls “the
financialization of the economy,” which has enriched one small segment
of society at the expense of everyone else.
Mostly, he grapples with the deep, hard-to-tickle-out reasons that the
gap between the rich and the middle class in the United States has
widened to such alarming proportions. How much have technological
advances contributed to income inequality? Globalization and
off-shoring? The necessity of having a college education to land a
decent-paying job? The decline of labor unions?
That last one, I have to admit, caught me up short. My parents were both
public high school teachers, who proudly walked picket lines when the
need arose. My hometown, Providence, R.I., was about as pro-union a city
as you could find outside the Rust Belt. But like many college-educated
children of union parents, I have never been a member of a union, and I
viewed them with mild disdain.
As Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union,
put it to me: “White-collar professionals tend to appreciate what
unions did for their parents. But they don’t view today’s janitors or
nurse’s aides in the same way.” Instead, they — or, rather, we — tend to
focus on the many things that are wrong with unions, exemplified these
days by the pensions of public service employees that are breaking the
backs of so many cities and states. Unions seem like a spent force, and
we tend not to lament their demise.
Noah includes himself as one of those liberals “who spent too much time
beating up unions,” as he told me recently. (He and I are both members
of the informal Washington Monthly alumni society.) His thinking began to change in the early 1990s when he read “Which Side Are You On?” It is a powerful meditation on the difficulties unions face, written by Thomas Geoghegan,
a Chicago labor lawyer. Researching “The Great Divergence” reinforced
Noah’s growing view that when liberals turned their backs on unions —
when they put, in his words, “identity politics over economic justice” —
they made a terrible mistake.
Noah places the high-water mark for unionism in the mid-1950s, when
nearly 40 percent of American workers were either union members or
“nonunion members who were nonetheless covered by union contracts.” In
the early postwar years, even the Chamber of Commerce believed that
“collective bargaining is a part of the democratic process,” as its
then-president noted in a statement.
But, in the late-1970s, union membership began falling off a cliff,
brought on by a variety of factors, including jobs moving offshore and
big labor’s unsavory reputation. Government didn’t help either: Ronald Reagan’s firing
of the air traffic controllers in 1981 sent an unmistakable signal that
companies could run roughshod over federal laws intended to protect
unions — which they’ve done ever since.
The result is that today unions represent 12 percent of the work force.
“Draw one line on a graph charting the decline in union membership, then
superimpose a second line charting the decline in middle-class income
share,” writes Noah, “and you will find that the two lines are nearly
identical.” Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, has estimated that the
decline of unions explains about 20 percent of the income gap.
This makes perfect sense, of course. Company managements don’t pay
workers any more than they have to — look, for instance, at Walmart, one of the most virulently antiunion companies
in the country. In their heyday, unions represented a countervailing
force that could extract money for its workers that helped keep them in
the middle class. Noah notes that a JPMorgan economist calculated that
the majority of increased corporate profits between 2000 and 2007 were
the result of “reductions in wages and benefits.” That makes sense, too.
At the same time labor has been in decline, the power of shareholders
has been on the rise.
“Say what you want about the abuses that labor committed,” says Noah.
“They were adversarial. They weren’t concerned enough about the general
prosperity. Some of them were mobbed up. But they were necessary
institutions.”
Not surprisingly, Noah closes his book with a call for a revival of the
labor movement. It is hard to see that happening any time soon. And
unions need to change if they are to become viable again. But if
liberals really want to reverse income inequality, they should think
seriously about rejoining labor’s side.
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The opinions expressed on EdNotesOnline are solely those of Norm Scott and are not to be taken as official positions (though Unity Caucus/New Action slugs will try to paint them that way) of any of the groups or organizations Norm works with: ICE, GEM, MORE, Change the Stakes, NYCORE, FIRST Lego League NYC, Rockaway Theatre Co., Active Aging, The Wave, Aliens on Earth, etc.
