http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/5982/right-to-work-laws-contributing-to-vanishing-middle-class-wealth-inequality/
Much has been made about the shrinking middle class in the United
States where the wealthiest 160,000 families own as much as the poorest
145 million families. Income inequality is the gap in how much
individuals earn from the work they do and the investments they make.
Wealth inequality measures the difference in how much money and other
assets individuals have accumulated. One of the contributing causes of
wealth inequality is the labor movement’s diminished economic and
political clout, as seen in the movement by states to enact
right-to-work laws.
Thanks to collective bargaining, union members have higher wages and
better benefits. In addition, union membership actually raises living
and working standards for all working men and women, union and
non-union. When union membership rates are high, so is the share of
income that goes to the middle class. When those rates fall, income
inequality grows and the middle class shrinks.
Corporations did not all of a sudden give workers two days off each
week, which we now call weekends, or paid vacations and sick leave, or
rights at the workplace, or pensions, or overtime pay. Virtually all
the benefits we have at work, whether in the public or private sector,
are because unions fought hard and long against big business who did
everything they could to prevent giving us these rights.
Labor membership is shrinking.
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