An essential movement in the face of wage inequality
Organized labor is on the rebound in the United States for one overriding reason — never have we needed unions more than we do right now.
There is a growing recognition in virtually every sector of our society, even among key Wall Street analysts, that this country is being badly hurt by galloping income disparity. When both the International Monetary Fund and Wall Street rating agency Standard & Poor’s release reports detailing how the widening gap between the top and the bottom is stifling growth, it is clear we have a serious problem.
Income inequality is the worst it has been in 85 years, even as income growth among the wealthiest continues to rapidly outpace everyone else. Since 2009, 95 percent of economic gains have gone to the top one percent of earners.
As the IMF and S&P studies make clear, this drags down our entire economy. It’s also a disaster for the middle class, where the constant downward pressure on wages is stagnating earnings. It is a blow to our American vision of ourselves and the cherished idea that anyone who works hard can make it in this country. But the worst toll is being exacted on the lowest-paid among us — workers at Walmart and McDonald’s; highly educated and poorly paid adjunct professors; the homecare workers who tend to people with disabilities and the elderly; taxi drivers and baggage handlers — all of whom are being left out of the American Dream.
More and more Americans are saying it is simply wrong to work a 40-hour week, only to go home to a shelter, eat at a soup kitchen, or be told by your wealthy corporate employer that you should go apply for food stamps.
That’s why labor is back.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/08/28/essential-movement-face-wage-inequality/gBcoRz1dlD14Ukms91n4uN/story.html