The gains in union membership in 2023 were driven entirely by workers under the age of 45, says Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
“I think that does point to a shift that may be a more lasting shift… in interest and popularity of unions,” says Shierholz.
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Shierholz says weaknesses in labor law are responsible for the significant gap between the number of workers who are represented by unions and those who want to be represented by unions but aren’t.
“That gap is labor law not truly protecting workers’ right to organize,” she says, noting that employers face little more than a slap on the wrist for violating that right.
NPR
January 26, 2024
Indeed, it is unlawful for employers to “interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights,” which includes the right to organize, according to the National Labor Relations Board. That puts some union avoidance strategies in treacherous legal territory. In fact, a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that in 41.5 percent of all union election campaigns, U.S. employers were charged with violating federal law.
Inc.
January 26, 2024
This disconnect is largely a product of how difficult it has become for American workers to join unions, said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. Unionization is often an arduous process that can take months or even years. When businesses form, jobs start off as nonunion positions. Workers can gain union status through democratic elections that typically occur one workplace at a time.
Maintaining union membership rates requires “really active [union] organizing just to keep up with the natural churn in our labor market,” Shierholz said. “It’s a long slog that goes on and on.”
Adding to the challenges, U.S. labor law is “highly stacked against workers,” Shierholz added, with current penalties for illegal retaliation against workers hardly serving as a deterrent for employers looking to crush union activity.
The Washington Post
January 26, 2024
The latest available executive pay data, as analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), shows that top U.S. CEOs on average were paid 344 times more than their typical employees in 2022. Between 1978 and 2022, EPI found, top executive pay skyrocketed by 1,209.2% while worker pay grew by just 15.3%.
Common Dreams
January 26, 2024
Other analysts of the Auten-Splinter case against growing income inequality — like the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould and Josh Bivens — have been more blunt. To determine whether the United States has become a great deal more unequal or just a little, Gould and Bivens don’t see any need to enter into debates about arcane stats that leave most Americans scratching their heads.
Gould and Bivens ask us instead to look at what individual Americans are actually earning “in the labor market,” a data set “that sidesteps nearly all” the complexities that can so bewilder almost everyone outside the narrow confines of the economics profession.
In the middle decades of the 20th century, Gould and Bivens note, labor market data show clearly that worker hourly pay neatly tracked the American economy’s growth in productivity. But then, around 1980, that linkage broke down. Worker wage gains began no longer keeping pace with gains in the productivity of the U.S. economy. This worker “missing pay” was essentially going instead to business owners and their top-paid hired hands.
Inequality.org
January 26, 2024
A report by the Economic Policy Institute finds 10 states have introduced or passed bills weakening child labor standards in the past two years.
First Coast News
January 26, 2024
Because of the lack of benefits and overtime pay, independent contractors are often compensated less for doing the same jobs. A typical person working in construction as an independent contractor would make as much as $16,729 less per year in income and benefits compared to what they would as an employee, the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, estimated.
Investopedia
January 26, 2024
In the years since, shortages have shown small signs of improvement, but understaffing challenges remain, according to research from the Economic Policy Institute.
CNBC
January 26, 2024
Washington also holds the worst Black-white unemployment ratio in the entire country, according to the Economic Policy Institute think tank — with vastly disproportionate unemployment rates in wards 7 and 8, underserved and predominantly Black areas in the district.
Huffpost
January 26, 2024
Such practices are rampant in the industry: Nearly 1 in 4 construction workers in Minnesota are either misclassified or paid under the table, according to a 2021 study from the Midwest Economic Policy Institute, a status that makes them susceptible to wage theft, and denial of workers’ compensation and overtime pay.
Workday Minnesota
January 26, 2024