Unions

If a union falls by the wayside and nobody notices, does it make a difference?

Verizon's union workforce will return to work tomorrow, after a 16-day strike. You may have noticed that you didn't notice.

The American economy can produce decent jobs. We know this to be true because it has happened before. Getting back to a decent-jobs economy will require a commitment on the part of policymakers to creating many more middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. While there are important reasons to support the incomes of those at the bottom of the wage distribution, we will not improve the lives of working families without improving and increasing job opportunities in the middle.

The evolution of certain aspects of the American social contract has lagged behind that of other developed countries for decades, but the insecurity resulting from our lack of social protections has traditionally been offset by high employment levels, a stable middle class and widespread perceived opportunity for upward mobility. The value of this trade-off has been undermined, though, by unequal wage growth and polarization of the labor market into low and high skill jobs, with a decline of middle income jobs and the retirement and health benefits that accompanied them.

Amidst the doom and gloom surrounding the labor market, there are bright spots that offer some hope for the return of good jobs in the United States. Foremost among them is the resurgence of employment in durable goods manufacturing.

If you are an informed, fair-minded person, chances are you feel at least conflicted about all the hard-knuckle attacks on public employee unions in Madison, Wisconsin, and other state capitols. While Governor Scott Walker's agenda was clearly much larger than balancing his current budget, there is no denying the magnitude of the pension crisis. Long predicted, it's finally here, and it's constricting the art of the possible in almost every state.

News that McDonald’s plans to hire 50,000 workers nationwide has prompted a predictable wave of commentary about the replacement of good jobs in America with bad "McJobs." Few, if any, would consider a poorly paid position at McDonald’s a good job for anyone but perhaps an entry-level teenage worker or the most desperate job-seeker. But it is much easier to reach a consensus on the definition of a bad job than to agree on what constitutes a good job.

The New America Foundation teamed up with Economists for Peace and Security and Bernard Schwartz to host a symposium on the budget crises faced by state and local governments in the wake of the Great Recession. The symposium included an impressive lineup of experts from a wide array of fields including leading policy institutes, academia, and the federal government.

The opening theme of the 2011 State of the Union address, and the theme that the President has carried forward since then, was his insistence that the nation has at long last emerged from economic crisis.  He said: “Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back.  Corporate profits are up.  The economy is growing again.  And after two years of job losses, we’ve added private-sector jobs for 12 straight months -- more than 1 million in all.”

In last week’s column, I argued that, because unions are likely to play an even smaller role in American politics and policy than they do today, progressives must come up with other strategies for mobilizing ordinary workers and voters to achieve goals like higher wages and a comprehensive system of social insurance.

The struggle in Wisconsin over the future of collective bargaining by public employees is the most dramatic battle in a war being waged on many fronts over the future of public sector unionism. In other states and cities, the issue is whether states whose revenues have collapsed because of the recession should fund the promised pensions of public employees like police officers, emergency responders and school teachers.