ICYMI From The American Prospect: Why America Needs a Better Labor Law
EDITOR'S NOTE: The House passed the PRO Act on Thursday. Nelson was a featured speaker at the Kentucky State AFL-CIO biennial convenion last October.
The PRO Act, which comes to the floor of the House today, is a very good start.
By SARA NELSON and RANDI WEINGARTEN
If you’re a corporate titan or Wall Street giant, the U.S. economy is doing very well; the stock market is at record highs and is showing outsized growth already this year. At the same time, though, the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than ever, and working people continue to struggle to find ways to claim their own share of all this prosperity.
To be sure, overall economic growth is positive, unemployment is stable, and some sectors have begun to add jobs again. But the persistent inequality between the top earners and the rest of us afflicts workers and their families with instability, anxiety, and despair, and exacerbates societal frustration, anger, and unrest. The traditional American modes of upward mobility—education, home-buying, and community development—have either stalled out or no longer deliver like they used to.
Labor unions have long served as a check on this imbalance. From the job actions that helped shape Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to the latest wave of labor walkouts across the automotive, hotel, food service, health care, and education sectors, unions have served as America’s leading mechanism to mitigate inequality by offering working people a pathway to a better life through a voice at work and a voice in our democracy. More than any other institution, labor has also been the countervailing force to corporate power.