While it hasn’t gotten much attention, one of the most important issues that
our elections this November could decide is the future of organized labor in
the United States. This is important not just for the 15.7 million workers
who happen to be in unions, but for the vast majority of the entire 154
million-member U.S. labor force. The wages, benefits, and working conditions
of most employees are affected by collective bargaining even if they don’t
have a union. For example, employers who want to keep unions out will
sometimes have to offer their workers such amenities as health insurance.

One of the most important problems that our economy has faced for the last
30 years has been stagnating real wages. With inflation now running at 10.6
percent over the last quarter, the problem appears to most people to be
rising prices, including food and energy. But for more than two decades
prior to the past year, inflation has been tame. Yet the real –
inflation-adjusted — wage of the typical employee barely increased at all
over the whole 34 years from 1973-2007.

This is amazing, when we consider that productivity – the amount that
workers produce per hour – increased quite substantially over the period.
Measured very conservatively, if we take “usable productivity” – the
increased production that we can expect to be reflected in rising wages – it
rose by 48 percent from 1973-2007. So our economy grows but, unlike in the
past, most employees do not share in the gains.

One important reason for this great leap backwards is that the rights of
workers to organize and bargain collectively have been sharply curtailed
over the last three decades.

For example, employees still have the legal right to petition for a
federally-run election at their workplace, in which workers can vote on
whether or not to join a union. To get such an election, they need the
signatures of at least 30 percent of the employees. But after the employees
get enough signatures for the election, employers very often intimidate
workers through threats and firings before the vote is held. The Center for
Economic and Policy Research has estimated that one in five workers who are
actively involved in a union organizing drive can expect to be fired. Many
others are “persuaded” to vote against the union through a long, captive
audience campaign of employer threats and harassment.

As a result of these tactics, only about 12 percent of employees are
organized in unions today, as compared with 35 percent in the 1950s. Reform
legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act would give employees a
fighting chance to regain some of their lost rights. This bill would mandate
that an employer recognize the union if it obtains the signatures of a
majority of employees. There would be no need for the long and costly –
especially to the workers who are fired – election campaign.

A poll by Global Strategies Group this month found that 68 percent of
middle-class Americans support the Employee Free Choice Act. Polls also
indicate that tens of millions would join a union if they had the choice.

The bill passed the House 241-185 but was filibustered by Republicans in the
Senate. It’s a party-line split in the Senate (except for support from
Republican Senator Arlen Specter). So the bill would need a Democratic
president and something close to 59 Democrats in the Senate in order to
pass.

This law would probably change Americans’ lives more than any legislation
since the New Deal brought us Social Security. The political influence of
millions of new union members would also bring us closer to such basic
reforms as universal health care. It’s all long overdue.

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Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000), and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy (www.justforeignpolicy.org).