The Cost of a Decline in Unions
More broadly, I disdained unions as bringing corruption, nepotism and rigid work rules to the labor market, impeding the economic growth that ultimately makes a country strong.
.. about one-fifth of the increase in economic inequality in America among men in recent decades is the result of the decline in unions.
.. A study in the American Sociological Review, using the broadest methodology, estimates that the decline of unions may account for one-third of the rise of inequality among men.
.. A full-time construction worker earns about $10,000 less per year now than in 1973, in today’s dollars
.. worst abuses by far haven’t been in the union shop but in the corporate suite.
.. Germany’s car workers have a strong union, and so do Toyota’s in Japan and Kia’s in South Korea.
.. In Germany, the average autoworker earns about $67 per hour in salary and benefits, compared with $34 in the United States. Yet Germany’s car companies in 2010 produced more than twice as many vehicles as American companies did, and they were highly profitable. It’s too glib to say that the problem in the American sector was just unions.
.. raises concerns about some aspects of public-sector unions