Declining union membership rates don’t just hurt union workers (or workers who would have been in unions a generation ago). They hurt workers across the economy, as a new study from the Economic Policy Institute reminds us:
- For nonunion private-sector men, weekly wages would be an estimated 5 percent ($52) higher in 2013 if private-sector union density (the share of workers in similar industries and regions who are union members) remained at its 1979 level. For a year-round worker, this translates to an annual wage loss of $2,704. For the 40.2 million nonunion private-sector men the loss is equivalent to $2.1 billion fewer dollars in weekly paychecks, which represents an annual wage loss of $109 billion.
- For nonunion private-sector men without a bachelor’s degree or more education (non–college graduates), weekly wages would be an estimated 8 percent ($58) higher in 2013 if union density remained at its 1979 levels. For a year-round worker, this translates to an annual wage loss of $3,016. As a benchmark, consider that the wage loss from increased trade with low-wage nations (Bivens 2013) among non–college graduates is estimated to be 5 percent.
- For nonunion private-sector men with a high school diploma or less education, weekly wages would be an estimated 9 percent ($61) higher if union density remained at its 1979 levels. For a year-round worker, this translates to an annual wage loss of about $3,172.
The effects on women’s wages are smaller since fewer women were unionized in 1979, but women are still losing hundreds of millions of dollars a week.
Here are some of the reasons unions can help raise the wages of non-union workers:
Employers who want to prevent their workers from unionizing may pay higher wages. Non-union employers may have to compete with union employers for workers. And, just as increasing the minimum wage can raise the wage floor:
… if a production worker at (nonunion) Eastman Kodak receives a union wage rate in order to forestall an organizing drive, her immediate supervisors likely benefit too. Research has found that lower-level managers—who, being managers, cannot unionize—benefit from a strong union presence in their surrounding labor market.
Bosses and Republican politicians have been successful with a divide-and-conquer strategy, getting non-union workers to think higher wages for union workers come at their expense. The reverse is true, so all workers—outside the top five percent or so, anyway—should be rooting for greater union strength.