Unions- Can most Americans expect to get a raise anytime soon?

[Rose Siding]

All Worked Up and Wondering Why

......Since union rolls began shrinking in the 1950's, the income of the typical household has more than doubled, even after inflation is taken into account. Luxuries once restricted to the rich - cross-country airplane travel, home movies, a bedroom for every child - are working-class staples. Despite intense efforts by unions, voters have elected Republicans rather than the labor-friendly Democrats to run the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Yet for all the ways that unions have moved to the periphery of American society, the Chicago schism might not be as removed from most people's lives as it seemed last week. The fight, in fact, revolved around a question that could become the central economic issue of the coming decade: can most Americans expect to get a raise anytime soon? Put another way, are unions more important to increasing pay than they have seemed for the last few decades?

The income gains of the last quarter-century are a result not of steady gains in hourly pay but of two forces almost certain not to be repeated. Women have entered the workforce in large numbers, increasing the total number of hours that families work and helping to make up for decades of stagnating wages. And a giant financial bubble, the kind that appears about as often as Halley's Comet, created so many jobs and so much demand for workers for a few years that nearly everyone received a nice pay increase.

Since that bubble burst, the wages of most workers - those in the bottom 60 percent of earners, roughly - have done little better than inflation. The late 1990's look ever more like an anomaly, and it is not clear what besides a bubble can produce pay gains for typical families in today's automated, globalized economy, where unions have little presence.......

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/weekinreview/31leon.html

So now what?

Last week, there was an article about the AFL-CIO hiring religious lobbyist/workers in an attempt to re-wed the two traditionally (historically) unified interests.

At some point, a stagnant pay rate will lead to more power for organized labor, won't it? Hopefully the religious left will will be quickest to align itself with labor. Other outcomes are unthinkable, wouldn't you say?

[democrat in Tallahassee]

1. my damned boss gets a big one every year while laying off

people. I am SO pissed.

[wli]

2. Taft-Hartley effectively legislated unions into impotence

[The2ndWheel]

3. Not if

"At some point, a stagnant pay rate will lead to more power for organized labor, won't it?"

capital continues to be as free as the wind to cross those arbitrary lines drawn on maps.

Or, failing to fix that, we manage to break the dividing lines in humans. Gender, race, country, age, beliefs, etc, etc(the list can get long). See, while corporations don't see those lines on maps(other than to control people), people do see those lines.

Then we have 6 billion+ people, and a global economy. Now, if oil gets too expensive, and no replacement to power industrial society is developed, that brings up a whole new set of problems, least of which would be union membership. But, for the sake of argument, lets say oil keeps us all nice and dirty. That's a very large, and growing, labor pool. Think all the workers will be living in luxury?

"Other outcomes are unthinkable, wouldn't you say?"

Absolutely not.