W Post opinion: Labor rides a building backlash

[Omaha Steve]

A group of workers and labor activists march down West Grand Boulevard as they demand a raise in the minimum wage for fast food workers in Detroit on May 10, 2013. (REBECCA COOK/REUTERS)


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/labor-rides-a-building-backlash/2015/05/21/7d607fda-ffd7-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html

By Dana Milbank Opinion writer May 21

I am proud to be a card-carrying member of Local 32035 of the Communications Workers of America.

It was not always thus. The Post is an open shop, and I dropped my membership several years ago when the union was encouraging readers to cancel their subscriptions to protest some management action. I didn’t see much sense in paying dues to accelerate the destruction of the newspaper business.

I don’t expect to gain much personally from rejoining the union faithful, because I’m in the top decile of American wage earners who have prospered in recent years. I signed up because income inequality, after years of worsening, has reached a crisis — and the decline in union membership is partly to blame. Rejoining the labor movement is my small, symbolic protest.

The gap in wealth and income between rich and poor is the worst since the Great Depression, and the gap between the rich and the middle class is at its highest since the government began keeping such statistics 30 years ago. After more than three decades of income growth for the wealthiest 10 percent and stagnation for everybody else, the top 3 percent now has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

FULL story at link.

Dana Milbank writes about political theater in the nation’s capital. He joined the Post as a political reporter in 2000.

[yallerdawg]

1. Good article.

We have seen a massive redistribution of wealth.

There are many causes of growing inequality — globalization, education disparities, tax policy — but an International Monetary Fund study released in March found that the decline in union membership has been responsible for half of the rise in the share of income going to the top 10 percent of earners in advanced economies between 1980 and 2010. Declining union membership, by weakening the bargaining power of low- and middle-income workers at both union and nonunion businesses, has increased the share of wealth going to corporate higher-ups and shareholders.