It’s not going too far to say that American workers everywhere benefit on an ongoing basis from the hard work labor unions have done over the past several decades. I work at a non-union company that treats its employees very well. They compete for talent with other companies, including union shops, and this encourages them to do right by us, offering us good working conditions, an excellent benefit package, and a host of other things that result in employees working for them for decades.
That’s a direct result of the modern labor movement’s successes over the years in securing these things for their members.
AFSCME had started a new website, UnionsWork.us, that spells out in clear terms the importance of the work of labor unions do to ensure that income inequality between wealthiest citizens and the rest of us doesn’t get worse.
Unfortunately, the fact is that it IS getting worse and there is a direct link between that and the trend toward reducing the ability of unions to protect workers. Look at this chart from the UnionsWork.us website:
The trend is clear: when participation in unions is high, the gap between the super wealthy and everyone else is lower. As union membership declines, the gap widens dramatically.
Check out UnionsWork.us, see how important unions are to ALL workers and to our economy, and sign up for their email list so you can learn more about the important work unions do on behalf of all of us.
