dylan asked:
I need to make a chart on how the growth of labor unions changed the economy, the economic situation, and the aftermath.
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January 5, 2009
How did the growth of labor unions change the economy, and what was the after math?
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increase in wages and benefits,safer workplace.
Comment by schwartzbarney — January 9, 2009 @ 2:20 am
The most powerful postwar unions blossomed in big factories and big firms. By bargaining with industry leaders and then spreading wage and benefit standards through pattern bargaining, they helped create the demand that kept America’s economic engine running.
America will never become a nation composed only of New Economy software engineers and other “knowledge workers.” There will always be demand for what are now low-paying, labor-intensive services: in nursing homes, hotels, trucking lines, theme parks, and child care centers. There is no escaping it: Policies that raise the quality and status of what are now low-paying service jobs must be part of any strategy for expanding the middle class (just as industrial unions lifted auto workers into the middle class). We cannot create enough good jobs without more collective bargaining at the bottom of the labor market and without a major increase in the minimum wage. Many labor leaders who began their careers as far back as the 1950s have been bewildered by the decline of the old economy. But now a generational transition is bringing to power men and women who have only known a world in which union power has been declining. Their starting point is that the balance of power in the United States is out of whack – corporations and the rich have too much power; ordinary working people and unions have too little.
Comment by Dice — January 9, 2009 @ 11:14 pm