Unity is Strength

Union membership in America has declined significantly since the early 1970s. According to Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Harvard University and author of a new study in the August issue of the American Sociological Review. “Most researchers studying wage inequality have focused on the effects of educational stratification—pay differences based on level of education—and have generally under-emphasized the impact of unions.”

From 1973 to 2007, wage inequality in the private sector increased by more than 40 percent among men, and by about 50 percent among women. Focusing on full-time, private sector workers, Western and co-author Jake Rosenfeld find that de-unionization—the decline in the percentage of the labor force that is unionized—and educational stratification each explain about 33 percent of the rise in within-group wage inequality among men. Among women, de-unionization explains about 20 percent of the increase in wage inequality, whereas education explains more than 40 percent. While the purpose of unions is to standardize wages for their members, Western and Rosenfeld find that even non-union workers, if they’re in highly unionized industries, tend to have fairly equal wages, partly because non-union employers will raise wages to the union level to discourage unionization.

“For generations, unions were the core institution advocating for more equitable wage distribution,” said Rosenfeld. “Today, when unions—at least in the private sector—have largely disappeared, that means that this voice for equity has faded dramatically."

In another interesting article on education and equality by John Marsh, assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, SOYMB reads that the United States is the most unequal of all developed countries and growing more unequal more quickly than most other countries. According to the sociologist Mark Rank, by the time they reach age 75, a majority of Americans — 58.5 percent — will have been officially poor at least once.

Poverty and inequality problems for all of us. But education cannot make them go away: it is simply not possible for all Americans to earn college degrees, and even if all Americans did graduate from college, then college would no longer be any guarantee of a good job and a decent living. "Today’s workers are more educated, more skilled, and work more hours — with no increase in real income. American schools are producing more educated workers than the American workplace can absorb." writes Hans G. Despain, professor in the Department of Economics at Nichols College in Dudley.

The U.S. economy will continue to produce many jobs that do not require college degrees. In general, those jobs pay low wages, and an education will not make them pay any more than they do. The U.S. economy has never produced anywhere close to the number of jobs, let alone decent-paying jobs, it would take to move the non-working poor into the ranks of the gainfully employed. Yet many Americans believe in the idea of a meritocracy in which those who work hard and get a good education will always be able to make it in life.

Increasing the number of college graduates is unlikely to have much of an impact on the number of people living in poverty or on economic inequality. Education is a route that can help some people escape poverty and low incomes, but that road will very quickly get bottlenecked. Education plays a role in where people end up on the ladder of incomes, but it cannot much change the distance between rungs on the ladder. By providing equal educational opportunity, good schools — the thinking goes — can combat poverty and economic inequality. People mean well, but they have chosen the wrong tool for the job, like trying to sweep your kitchen floor with a shovel. You will make some progress, but there are other, better tools for what you want to get done. We have other income-leveling tools at our disposal. That we choose not to use them does not mean they would not work.

A resurgence of organized labor would be the most realistic and effective way to combat income inequality. Their decline correlates with the increase in economic inequality over the last 40 years, and their resurgence would reverse that trend