The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Richard A. Levins is a senior fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy -- www.iatp.org. He is a professor emeritus of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book, "Middle Class * Union Made" is available from Itasca Books at www.itascabooks.com.

http://cjonline.com/stories/082606/opi_levins.shtml

If you click on your cite, and notice Mr. Levins' byline. He wrote what you quoted, no doubt to sell his book, and implies he is writing for Minuteman Media, which, oddly enough, redirects you here.

Oh, and if you scratch the surface, just a little, you find this tidbit:

IPS is a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. We work with social movements to promote true democracy and challenge concentrated wealth, corporate influence, and military power.

Nice try.

Edited July 25, 2010 by ##########

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Richard A. Levins

Professor Emeritus

Department of Applied Economics

218e Classroom-Office Building

1994 Buford Avenue

St. Paul, MN 55108-6040

(612) 625-5238 (Phone)

(612) 625-6245 (Fax)

E-mail: dlevins@umn.edu

Click here for additional photos.

Dr. Richard A. Levins is a native of Florida. He received his BA in Mathematics and his MS in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida in Gainesville. His doctorate in Agricultural Economics was earned at Mississippi State University. Before joining the University of Minnesota in 1988, he served on the faculty of the University of Maryland and the University of Florida. Dr. Levins retired in 2003 from an academic life that included Extension appointments and teaching first-year economics, the history of U.S. agriculture, and research methods for graduate students.

Dr. Levins now holds the title Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He is an award-winning author of books about policy and market power issues affecting the food system. His articles have appeared in major newspapers across the country, in leading industry publications, and in professional journals. His writing draws upon a 25-year academic career involving both advising on-going businesses and teaching economic principles at the college level. He now maintains an active practice in consulting, writing, and public speaking.

Dr. Levins's most recent book, co-authored with Stewart Acuff, is Getting America Back to Work (www.itascabooks.com).

http://www.apec.umn.edu/faculty/dlevins/

Edited July 25, 2010 by El Buscador

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Richard A. Levins

Professor Emeritus

Department of Applied Economics

218e Classroom-Office Building

1994 Buford Avenue

St. Paul, MN 55108-6040

(612) 625-5238 (Phone)

(612) 625-6245 (Fax)

E-mail: dlevins@umn.edu

Click here for additional photos.

Dr. Richard A. Levins is a native of Florida. He received his BA in Mathematics and his MS in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida in Gainesville. His doctorate in Agricultural Economics was earned at Mississippi State University. Before joining the University of Minnesota in 1988, he served on the faculty of the University of Maryland and the University of Florida. Dr. Levins retired in 2003 from an academic life that included Extension appointments and teaching first-year economics, the history of U.S. agriculture, and research methods for graduate students.

Dr. Levins now holds the title Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He is an award-winning author of books about policy and market power issues affecting the food system. His articles have appeared in major newspapers across the country, in leading industry publications, and in professional journals. His writing draws upon a 25-year academic career involving both advising on-going businesses and teaching economic principles at the college level. He now maintains an active practice in consulting, writing, and public speaking.

Dr. Levins's most recent book, co-authored with Stewart Acuff, is Getting America Back to Work (www.itascabooks.com).

http://www.apec.umn.edu/faculty/dlevins/

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.

The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

“Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.” ~ Molly Ivins

[alienlovechild 75]

“Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.” ~

Unions don't create jobs and they've been shrinking as a percentage of the workforce for decades. Why?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

“Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.” ~ Molly Ivins

In 2009, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary

workers who were members of a union--was 12.3 percent, essentially

unchanged from 12.4 percent a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor

Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers

belonging to unions declined by 771,000 to 15.3 million, largely

reflecting the overall drop in employment due to the recession. In

1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available,

the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, and there were 17.7

million union workers.

Some highlights from the 2009 data are:

--More public sector employees (7.9 million) belonged to a

union than did private sector employees (7.4 million),

despite there being 5 times more wage and salary workers

in the private sector.

--Workers in education, training, and library occupations

had the highest unionization rate at 38.1 percent.

--Black workers were more likely to be union members than

were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.

--Among states, New York had the highest union membership

rate (25.2 percent) and North Carolina had the lowest

rate (3.1 percent).

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

So, I guess pretty soon we will all be working for the government? Spoken like a true Communist.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

(the full version is a bit long, but an interesting read)

How Unions Can Help Restore the Middle Class

The following testimony on the importance of unions to restoring a solid middle class was given to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Tuesday, March 10, by Dr. Paula B. Voos, a professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, and an EPI research associate.

There is now a substantial body of research evidence on the economic impact of U.S. unions. Unions typically:

- Raise the wages of the employees they represent;

- Increase the fringe benefits of those same employees, usually by a greater extent than they increase wages;

- Reduce income inequality within the represented firm, by reducing differentials between low-paid and high-paid employees, men and women, various racial/ethnic groups, younger and older employees, and so forth;

- Increase pay of nonunion workers in occupations and industries with substantial union presence as nonunion employers move closer to union standards;

- Reduce income inequality in the wider society by reducing inequality not only within and between represented firms, but also across entire industries as nonunion employers increase compensation to discourage unionization, all of which strengthens the middle class (Card, Lemieux, and Riddell, 2007).

- Reduce employee turnover by lessening the number of quits (voluntary separations); and

- Thus increase the retention of skilled employees, enhancing human capital and productivity in both the firm and the economy as a whole;

(See Freeman and Medoff, 1984; Bennett and Kaufman, 2007).

Furthermore:

- Because they suffer less turnover, unionized employers have greater incentives for employee training and for high-skill, high commitment human resource policies, rather than low-skill, high-turnover or other "low road" approaches to human resources. Reduced turnover avoids costs to employers but also lessens society's costs associated with unemployment, such as Food Stamps, uncompensated care and other social programs.

- Union-represented employees have been found to be more productive, on average. This is probably both due to the fact they have more work experience and due to greater employer investments in them and in physical capital (see Doucouliagos and Laroche 2003 for an overview of seventy-three statistically independent studies);

- The nature of the labor-management relationship is crucial in this regard: good union-management relationships are ones that foster high workforce productivity, but workplaces characterized by labor strife and worker resentment—whether union or non-union—do not (Belman, 1992).

- Union employees typically cannot be disciplined or discharged without a reason, termed "just cause." This assurance of fair treatment is one reason union employees have greater "voice" than non-union employees and typically are more willing to make suggestions or speak up to improve business operations.

The most important reason to improve the ability of employees to organize into unions is that such membership is a fundamental right in democratic societies, related to freedom of association and the right of all human beings to band together to improve their lives. For that reason alone, I would urge you to pass legislation to make real in the U.S. once again the promise of the National Labor Relations Act. Section 1 of that Act puts federal law behind "the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and ... the exercise by workers of the full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing." (NLRA Sec. 1).

Nonetheless, some may be concerned with the economic consequences of increased unionization at this moment in time. They should be assured that the economic consequences would be positive. There are two main reasons:

- First, greater union membership would help the United States recover from the current economic downturn and help prevent future economic crises.

- And second, greater union membership would help the United States make the transition to competing internationally on the basis of high productivity, high quality, and innovation, rather than on the basis of low wage labor or long hours - a race to the bottom that we can never win against nations like China.

http://www.epi.org/a...e_middle_class/