E.J. Dionne says labor is cool again:
Young Americans are the country’s most pro-union generation. Labor has poll ratings most politicians only dream about, and the Biden administration is making workers’ pay, benefits and rights its calling card.
....Heralds of change include well-publicized organizing efforts in new sectors of the economy, broad public sympathy for the Hollywood writers’ struggle, and big wage gains by workers increasingly willing to strike for them. There is also President Biden, the most outspokenly pro-labor president since Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Hmmm. I would like to be equally optimistic, and it's certainly true that President Biden has made labor central to his presidency in a way other Democratic presidents haven't. Unfortunately, the last few years haven't been great ones for unions.
Private sector unionization continues to fall, declining to 6% in 2022. And although union members generally earn more than nonunion workers (about $1,150 per week compared to $1,000 per week), their wage gains have fallen behind:
Since 2012, union members have seen real wage gains of only 1.4% compared to 5% for nonunion workers. As much as I wish it were otherwise, this is not a sign of strong union health.
Wouldn't 'union wages' go down if you suddenly unionized a bunch of retail and warhouse jobs that get paid less than manufacturing jobs?
And nevertheless still have grown less than non-union jobs because the greatest percentage gains in wages have gone to the lowest fractiles, which tend not to be unionized.
Yeah, wages at warehouse jobs haven't increased like other low wage jobs... and if you were already being paid better than your peers, your peers catching up isn't going to show.
Composition effects likely play a large role here. These charts are probably useless and misleading without taking that into account. Might be some bad faithiness going on here.
I’m also thinking it’s mostly composition effect — growth in private-sector unionization has been in historically lower-paid service industries; hospitality as well as retail and warehousing. Would like to see trends broken down by Standard Industrial Classification. Yes, this is me advocating for disaggregated data yet again.
Agree. Not only in the headline incorrect (it is not "Union wages are way down", but "growth in union wages is down (along with non-union wages)".
In addition, disaggregating by industry and classification is the only way to make some kind of meaningful comparison, as you note.
Finally, measuring "growth" can be misleading, as well, if one does not take the base into account. For example, if non-union wage rises from $10 to $13, then that is a 30% increase, while if union wage rises from $20 to $25 that is only a 25% increase. But I'd say that the union workers are still doing better.
Good point on growth vs levels.
The link Kevin provided shows union compensation is $53/hr vs non-union compensation of $38/hr. Thats a substantial difference.
This. Kevin often has blinders on that keep him from realizing that comparing percentage changes don’t matter as much if the actual base numbers are grossly different. It’s the same blinders that lead him to often treat average and median as if they’re basically the same when dealing with other topics.
Don't forget benefits. When I lost my well-paying job,I was forced to take a job that pays a lot less. But the lower paying job, manual labor I could do if I had dropped out in 8th grade, comes with a pension significantly higher than what I will get from the higher-wage jobs I've had, only because of the union-negotiated contract. (Yes, the earlier jobs paid more, but that's because they were "professional jobs", -- I had to have a college degree, I had to wear ties. The fact that the job I have now has a much more lucrative pension surprised me.)
Thanks for sharing. If you don't mind, can you tell us what your old job was and new job is?
I’m part of a union. Our contract covers 5 years. At the beginning of the pandemic, the raises called for in our contract were below inflation, mainly because nobody in 2018 knew inflation would jump so high in 2021-2022.
Then our next 5 year contract took effect in 2023, and immediately we all got 9% raises followed by guaranteed raises of 3-5% every year until 2028. I doubt non-unionized people can count on getting similar raises in the future.
It’s possible non-unionized people were able to more quickly turn reports of high inflation into higher wages in the unique years of 2020-2022. I doubt though that non-unionized workers really have it better than unionized workers when once-in-a-lifetime economic strains like a pandemic aren’t happening.
This was exactly my question as well. Many union workers today are still working under contracts that are several years old and haven't been renegotiated yet to account for inflation and other changes in the economy (or in their sector). Non-union rates, while much lower, are also much more flexible. Check back in a year or so to see what gains unions have been able to negotiate, and then we'll have a better idea of whether they're doing their job or not.
The bottom chart would have presented a more accurate picture if the lowest level was 0% instead of 5%.
OK, maybe Kevin needs to get a new headline writer.
But the main point is that media hype about gains for unions is probably overblown. It is based on anecdotes about unionization drives, which very often fail, not on real statistics. The media have been talking for years about a supposed drastic labor shortage , although overall there have been no special wage gains. So maybe a lot of workers have thought that they could finally form a union, but they may come up against the reality that there is still little economic or government support for unions. Biden can't do much with executive orders.
Wage growth metric only works if comparing comparable jobs.
None the less, unions are not really growing. What private areas are mainly, or even just have a significant presence, unionized? Automobile, airplane manufacturing (?), and ....
The United Mine Workers were big and important during the industrial revolution. But mining is mainly digging for coal and that is dying.
The Teamsters were big in their day, but numbers fell off. They've expanded into other areas beyond trucking, but membership is still off their highs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_Teamsters
Steelworkers? There's manufacturing, building and construction, i.e. use of steel, and there's steel plants. Steel production is off the highs ('70's) but still significant. However, the big integrated plants (ore to steel) have been shutting down in favor of mini-mills that recycle iron and steel--and there is consolidation. US Steel is an acquisition target and the union is pushing for its purchase by another union shop.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/business/us-steel-steelmaking-history/index.html
Why go through all the ups and downs and in and outs -- yada, yada, yada -- and rounds and rounds of organizing?
Let your elected legislators do all the hard work for you.
https://onlabor.org/why-not-hold-union-representation-elections-on-a-regular-schedule/
All you have to do is show up on election day and vote.
* * * * * *
When are progressives going to wake up to the political possibilities federally mandated cert/recert/decert votes, maybe every four years?
Pushing this issue takes no huge financing -- the central impact on most people's lives comparing to the impact of 1960s anti-segregation impact on minorities alone.
All we need do is talk up the proposal in venues we usually inhabit and watch the political wild fire cross the country.
Come on folks. I mentioned base pay of $1000 for nonunion and $1150 for union jobs. It's not different enough to make a growth chart invalid.
As for composition, do you think union/nonunion composition suddenly went bonkers in 2021? There is no reason to think that. In any case, I believe this is all based on CPS data that compares the same jobs from one year to the next, which eliminates composition bias.
If you don't want to believe this, fine. But find some evidence, instead of just raising a million "what if?" scenarios that you haven't checked out.
It seems to me that up to 2020 the difference between wages and between the base pays are similar and that the differences cancel each other out. Then, simultaneous with COVID, the difference between union and non union wages begins to grow larger and needs to be explained.
Two more points: 1. Do the wages in your graph include benefits? It is probably fair to assume that unions provide better benefits, so this is important.
2. I would also assume that union wages tend to "drag along" non union wages in similar jobs at least to some degree. Such that unions are useful for every worker, including the ones who "refuse to sacrifice their right to work".
(I saw this formulation recently on an anti-union poster somewhere. Americans have the weirdest ideas about the meaning of "freedom". I think freedom to starve is not a desirable thing to have but apparently not everybody agrees...)