As Liz Emrich notes in her post "The Assumptions We Make," Republicans try to portray Democrats such as Barack Obama as part of an educated elite that neither cares for the "common person" nor shares his or her values. Liz calls this a "marketing ploy" that is designed to appeal to people without college educations. Unfortunately, I think it is much more than that. First, some background.
Not many decades ago someone with a high school education had all that he or she needed in order to have a lifelong successful career. During that time a significant percentage of people employed in the private sector had jobs that were represented by unions. Check the actual figures here.
Union membership in the private sector is now about what it was back in 1901. Down from a high of 39% in 1958, as of 2006 union membership was only 7.4% -- less than one-fifth of the represented empoloyees in 1958.
Union membership has almost disappeared in the private sector, and exists largely in the public sector. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2007 35.9% of public employees were represented by unions, but only 7.5% of private sector employees.
But the interesting thing is if you look at the wage differences between represented and non-represented employees. Union members have a median weekly wage of $863. Employees who are not represented by a union have a weekly wage of $663 -- a difference of $200 per week, or over $10,000 per year.
While the wage differential is not completely due to union membership, the trend is clear. If you look at median wage by occupation you find that in virtually every non-professional occupational category union members do much better than non-union members. In some cases, the differences are huge. For example, in service occupations the difference is $234 per week -- a difference that represents over 50% of the non-union wage of $404 per week. In construction and maintenance the difference is $359 per week, or over $18,000 per year.
The war against unions has been waged by conservatives and business interests for years now. People in non-professional occupations -- most of them without college educations -- are the people most helped by union representation. But they have basically been stabbed in the back by Republicans. For millions of ordinary working people this has been an economic disaster.
In order to conceal their own intentional role in this disaster, conservatives have created the myth of the liberal elite -- the idea that liberals are completely disconnected from the interests of common people. This myth has been propagated by the elite of the conservative elite -- multi-millionaires with graduate degrees from the top universities, with tastes for the very best that life has to offer.
Rather than Obama appealing to his "humble origins" in an attempt to court non-professional people, I think a better strategy would be to speak the simple truth about the fifty-year war by conservatives against labor unions. The fact of Obama's humble origins does absolutely nothing for ordinary workers. Having another $200 show up in the weekly paycheck -- over $300,000 in the course of a 30-year career -- does.
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And just to drive it home further. I think we probably agree that white collar employees have also benefited from union benefits. The very benefits that unions negotiated for and won, could not then be denied to other employees by employers wanted to be competitive in the marketplace.
In fact, I would go further, and say that the war against unions is actually a war against all employees, but you'll never hear anyone who is in a position to know actually admit that. Unions are just the proxies, like the troops we keep sending to Iraq and Afghanistan.
in 1958 to $20,014 in 2006.
Those low wage earners are just glad they have a job. Sure, they'd like to make more, but they have seen what is happening union jobs, and most understand that trend is beyond the power of a politician to fix.
It's this sense of resignation that Obama was referring to when he made his "guns and religion" comments several months ago.
But in short, there are tens of millions of jobs in the U.S. that cannot be exported, including jobs in the construction, restaurant, food processing and harvesting, janitorial, retail, and other sectors, and many of these people are not well-paid and have few or no benefits.
Even jobs that have gone overseas did not leave because of some immutable law of nature, but sometimes because of governmental policies and trade agreements.
Furthermore, there are a number of practices by businesses related to union organizing that should be better addressed by legislation. For example --
"The University of Illinois at Chicago's Center for Urban Economic Development released a study in December 2005 that found: 30 percent of employers fire pro-union workers during union organizing drives; 49 percent of employers threaten to close a work site when workers try to unionize; 82 percent of employers hire union-busting consultants to fight organizing drives; and 91 percent of employers force employees to attend anti-union one-on-one meetings with supervisors."
Given an 80 percent drop in private sector union-represented jobs the last 50 years, in my humble opinion it's time for Democrats to start talking about that.
"In order to conceal their own intentional role in this disaster, conservatives have created the myth of the liberal elite -- the idea that liberals are completely disconnected from the interests of common people."
this is true. Furthermore, Republicans have chosen to identify immigrants as the threat to American jobs, thus further obscuring their role in creating the problem.
But Mishima, union membership isn't a good in and of itself, right? The point of a union is to raise the earnings for its members (the fact that unions are basically labor monopolies, and that's how they achieve their higher results, we'll leave that for another time). However, it seems that even though union membership has dropped, the median earnings in REAL, inflation-adjusted dollars have gone up. So, maybe unions aren't necessary for higher median wages?
If unions are going to continue to be disbanded, we need that universal health care...yesterday.
in 1958 to $20,014 in 2006. "
First, you're looking at a table of income for Hispanic folks. Second, you're looking at the column for median income for women. The problem is that income statistics include most anyone who made any income at all. So I think what you're seeing is not a growth in hourly wage, but women working more hours.
If you look at the "male" side of the table, you see that since 1973 income has basically been flat:
1973: $31,933
2006: $32,265
This is during a period in which labor productivity has risen steadily:
1950s 3.0%
1960s 2.6%
1970s 1.1%
1980s 1.3%
1990s - around 2 percent
From 2000-2005 there have also been significant increases in productivity:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/02/art4full.pdf
What you see over time is that productivity gains across all sectors are no longer reflected in wages. I don't claim that this is due to the significant loss of union members. But -- I think you would agree that it is at least an interesting coincidence.
I don't understand MB's comment that union membership isn't a good in and of itself. There are problems with unions and there are benefits.
There is a history of corruption within unions that is undeniable and have grave consequences for the efficacy of the group acting on behalf of its members. I think it substantiates the truism that money and power corrupt at many levels of society. But that leads to a broader concept. A union is a microcosm of a larger entity. You can make the point that our nation is a union, that our citizenship is our membership in that union. I don't need to go into the benefits we receive, and that are protected by the Constitution (even given the assault on it by the current administration).
But there are myriad examples across millennia of what wealth and power from governments, individuals and groups of individuals do to keep the poor poor and dependent. Advocating in a group for living wages is just one element of what unions provide, there are the not so easily quantifiable elements of dignity and humane treatment. If governments collude with and provide free rein to the wealthy and powerful to only consider the accumulation of more wealth and power then those historical examples demonstrate that little consideration will be given to those working to provide that wealth for others.
No, the first table is "ALL RACES." It breaks down by race as you scroll down.
Second, you're looking at the column for median income for women.
Yes, my mistake.
If you look at the "male" side of the table, you see that since 1973 income has basically been flat:
1973: $31,933
2006: $32,265
Oh, well, thanks for picking the two dates most convenient to make your point. You said that the high of union membership was in 1958, so let's compare that to today:
1958: $22,300 median male wage
2006: $32,265 median male wage
So, um, even though union membership has gone down from the peak in 1958, incomes have in fact gone up.
Furthermore, even though real earnings have stayed more or less stagnant since 1973, union membership has continued to go down. So, it seems union membership is not really correlated with national median earnings.
bbd:
I don't understand MB's comment that union membership isn't a good in and of itself. There are problems with unions and there are benefits.
I'm working from the assumption that the point of unions is to have leverage to get benefits, livable wages, etc. for the union's members. If you could have all those things without a union, there would be no purpose for the union, the union's existence has no value in and of itself. Maybe I'm wrong?
In a union job you work under a labor contract. The contract defines the terms and conditions of employment. It typically covers all sorts of things including lunch and other breaks, seniority rules, performance appraisals, grievance procedures, and so on.
Without a union you basically serve at the pleasure of the employer, and the employer can typically terminate you for no reason at all. If you work for a non-union company for 20 years, and one day the boss decides to give your job to his niece, too bad for you. The boss doesn't even have to give you a reason.
My wife used to work as a nurse in long-term care. One facility she worked in had a policy of requiring employees who quit to give two weeks of notice. If they didn't then they wouldn't get paid for any unused vacation time. But typically, after giving notice, the employee was simply terminated a day or two later. And the employee wasn't even "terminated." He or she simply didn't get scheduled for any more shifts. This was standard practice.
A nursing aide there called in sick one day. She had sick time available, had been to a doctor, and called in ahead of her shift to give them sufficient notice. Nonetheless she was told that if she didn't come in, she would be terminated. She didn't come in because she was too sick to work. So she was terminated. She had worked there 12 years.
If you like working for a company in which you can be terminated or demoted at any time based on the whim of a supervisor or owner, then non-union companies are great places to work.
I think we should get out there and say, look, the job of a President is a very difficult one.
Why would we want to give that job to someone who's just an average person?
We want a very well educated, intelligent, and tough person in that job.
We don't want a guy who's sweeping the floors to be the CEO of a company, so why would we want a guy who pumps your gas to be President?
Who could argue with that?
Turn the elitist label against them.
Now, more generally, you seem to be opposed to the idea of "employment at will," which is the standard here in the US. That's never going to go away, and there are some benefits to it. Just as your employer can fire you at any moment, so can you quit at any moment for no reason. You can't do that with an employment contract.