You want to know why it matters to everyone that the percent of workers covered by a collective bargaining contract has dropped from 27% in 1979 to 11.6% in 2019? The Economic Policy Institute’s Lawrence Mishel offers three reasons:
- “For the ‘typical’ or median worker, declining unionization translates to a loss of $1.56 per hour worked, the equivalent of $3,250 for a full-time, full-year worker.”
- “Deunionization widened the 90/50 wage gap (the gap between earners at the 90th percentile of the wage distribution and the 50th percentile, measured in logs) by 7.7 points and therefore explains 33.1% of the 23.2 point growth of the wage gap between high- and middle-wage earners over the 1979–2017 period.”
- ”Unions disproportionately benefit those with low and moderate wages, those with lower levels of education, and nonwhites, and this has been the case since the birth of the modern labor movement in the New Deal.”
● Amazon fired two workers in retaliation for their activism, the National Labor Relations Board found. These were not warehouse workers in Alabama—they were designers in Seattle who had pressured the company both about conditions for warehouse workers and its climate change impact. Which goes to show that it’s not just warehouse workers who need labor protections.
● Elizabeth Davis, ¡Presente!
The people of D.C. are in collective grief and mourning on the death of Washington Teacher Union president Elizabeth “Liz” A. Davis in a car accident on April 4, 2021. She has been a powerful presence in the lives thousands of students, teachers, and families through her unwavering dedication to radical teaching, righteous activism, and grassroots organizing.
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