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<DIV><FONT size=2>("It made me realize how rarely observers like me make the
link between the decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of
liberal legislation, and the steady weakening of organized labor", wrote
columnist David Broder a couple of days ago in the Washington Post. Not only
Broder. Many on the left also fail to make the connection, more often confusing
cause with effect by blaming the rightward shift of the political spectrum
primarily on the failure of the traditional workers-based parties and their
"misleaders" -- the Democrats in the US and social
democratic and (communist) parties in the other advanced capitalist
countries -- rather than on the structural changes which have weakened
the left in the political arena. Broder's belief that the
unions once had more political clout than the capitalists is either a
genuine misunderstanding or, more likely, a journalist's exaggeration
designed to illustrate his thesis. And the Democrats, if anything, are less
rather than more tied to the unions, as he suggests at the end.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>MG</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>--------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The Price Of Labor's Decline </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>By David S. Broder</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Washington Post</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>September 9, 2004</FONT></DIV><FONT size=2>
<DIV><BR>Because the Republicans delayed their convention so much that they ran
right into the start of the Labor Day weekend, that end-of-the-summer holiday
came and went with minimal attention paid to working Americans. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>True, President Bush and John Kerry argued about the meaning of the latest
unemployment report, which showed that the economy had added 144,000 jobs in
August and that the unemployment rate had fallen to 5.4 percent. Bush said it
spelled recovery; Kerry said it meant continued weakness. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But there is a larger story about workers and organized labor that has gone
largely unnoticed this year. I was reminded of it by a conversation on the train
coming back from New York. My seatmate, a fellow reporter, was asking questions
about the changes I had seen in Congress since I started covering Capitol Hill
almost 50 years ago. And when we got around to discussing lobbyists, he seemed
genuinely surprised when I said that back then -- and for decades afterward --
the most influential lobbyists did not represent business or trade associations
but labor unions. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"Labor unions!" he said, reflecting the understandable surprise of a savvy
reporter who knows only the congressional power alignments of the past decade.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It made me realize how rarely observers like me make the link between the
decline of progressive politics and with it the near-demise of liberal
legislation, and the steady weakening of organized labor. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The economic effects of that trend are well documented. In the
just-published update of their annual volume, "The State of Working America,"
Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Sylvia Allegretto of the Economic Policy
Institute chart the decline of union membership from roughly one-quarter of the
workforce in the late 1970s to barely one-eighth today. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"This falling rate of unionization has lowered wages, not only because some
workers no longer receive the higher union wage, but also because there is less
pressure on non-union employers to raise wages," they write. And the gap is
large. In 2003 the average blue-collar union job paid $30.76 an hour in wages
and benefits, compared with $18.11 for the nonunion job. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A separate study, also released last week, by David Kamin and Isaac Shapiro
of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, examined how the fruits of this
current economic recovery have been allocated. In the 10 quarters since the
recession officially ended in late 2001, 47 percent of the real national income
growth has gone to corporate profits, and only 15 percent to wages and salaries.
</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Even if you add in the cost of health insurance and other benefits, as you
should, the workers got only 43 percent -- well below the 61 percent average in
eight previous recoveries. This is the first post-World War II recovery in which
corporate profits grabbed a bigger share of the growth than workers' pay and
benefits. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Both of these studies come from liberal think tanks, but the statistics are
straight from the Labor and Commerce departments, and they suggest what the
economic costs have been for the loss of labor's clout. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The loss of labor's political leverage is, if anything, even more striking.
As I told my seatmate, when labor lobbied powerfully on Capitol Hill, it did not
confine itself to bread-and-butter issues for its own members. It was at the
forefront of battles for aid to education, civil rights, housing programs and a
host of other social causes important to the whole community. And because it was
muscular, it was heard and heeded. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Today, the shrunken Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate are
probably closer to labor -- financially and politically -- than they were in the
1970s. But an enfeebled union movement is unable to sway more than a handful of
Republicans. Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford and almost all of their GOP congressional
leaders understood that it was in their interest to help labor achieve some of
its goals. Now, unions cannot even muster the strength to force a vote on
raising the minimum wage, which has not been changed in seven years. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Politicians took notice that even in the Democratic nomination contest,
labor looked weak. Except for the firefighters union, which went with Kerry
early, most of labor split its endorsements between Dick Gephardt and Howard
Dean. Neither survived the Iowa caucuses, where labor is supposed to be a major
force. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>For those who think a Wal-Mart economy is the American future, the falloff
in labor's influence is no cause for regret. But I suspect the country will
continue to pay a price -- and not just union families -- until labor regains a
place at the economic and political table</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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