Today is Labor Day. Today especially, we should celebrate the contributions of labor unions to improving the lives of workers.
Among these contributions are the 8-hour day, overtime pay, the weekend, better wages, and workplace health and safety standards.
These benefits didn't just happen all by themselves. They required struggle and sacrifice. They came about only because workers fought for them. And the workers won only because they fought together. Solidarity was the key.
But this Labor Day, some local papers are running an insulting editorial by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. Here is one of them.
The Department of Labor is supposed to enforce labor laws and protect the interests of workers. But the Department of Labor is not even enforcing the most basic of labor laws. A recent GAO report shows that it is refusing to enforce minimum wage laws, and is not collecting unpaid and under-paid wages on behalf of workers who are ripped off by their employers. Here is an article with details on the Department's lawless behavior.
The Department of Labor, and Elain Chao in particular, have been on an anti-worker crusade ever since Bush took power in 2001. That's why Chao's editorial is so insulting. Not only that, but Chao's editorial distorts statistics in order to try to convince workers how well they are doing. For example,
U.S. productivity growth in this administration has exceeded the averages of each of the three previous decades. Increased productivity is the key to increased income, and per-capita disposable income is now 14 percent higher in real terms than in January 2001.
This ignores inflation. Any Econ 101 student would know better than to do that. It also overlooks the fact that, unlike under previous administrations, today's workers are not receiving the benefits we should have earned from their increased productivity.
Referring to a recent census report, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities says
This marks the first time on record that poverty and the incomes of typical working-age households have worsened despite six consecutive years of economic growth.
And there's this report: Compared to 1990s, middle-class working families lose ground in the 2000s from the Economic Policy Institute.
This has happened largely because workers have lost power. How well workers do depends in large part on whether or not we have bargaining power. Individually, workers have little bargaining power. We have power only if we join together.
Conservatives, Republicans, and business interests have been working hard to take away workers' power and diminish workers' rights. They've been winning. That's why the benefits of our increased productivity have been taken away from us and kept by CEO's. And if unions are further weakened by conservatives, Republicans, and business interests, we'll lose the few workplace rights we still have left.