Vigilance is needed to sustain labor’s gains

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http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Vigilance-is-needed-to-sustain-labor-s-gains-6487631.php?t=1846937a3b&cmpid=fb-premium

On Labor Day, it is appropriate to thank unions for the difference between our steadily improving outlook in California and what’s happening in those other states.

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Labor fought in the past for child labor laws, collective bargaining, Social Security and unemployment insurance. If we wish to understand the root of growing economic inequality, we need look no further than the decline in union density.

At midcentury, when unions were at peak strength, with a third of the workforce organized, the prospects for working-class Americans shone brightly. The top 1 percent of income earners, the employing class, took in under 10 percent of national income, and they were doing just fine. Today, union density has been driven down to just 11 percent of the workforce, the top 1 percent takes in nearly 20 percent of national income, and economic inequality is soaring.

Perhaps the most important thing for us to recall is that workers’ rights and a measure of economic fairness, once won, are not permanent. They depend on the sustained activism, values and organizations that they required in the first place. Honor labor.

Joshua Pechthalt is the president of the California Federation of Teachers.