A new report released ahead of the Labor Day holiday says a steep decline in union membership in recent decades has had an outsize effect on the American workforce, tamping down wage increases for nonunion workers, USA Today reports.
The report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute also says that the dwindling influence of unions is a significant but often ignored reason for wage stagnation, along with globalization, technological change and the slowdown in educational achievement gains.
Average weekly earnings for nonunion private-sector male workers would have been 5%, or $52, higher in 2013 if the share of union workers had remained at 1979 levels. That’s tantamount to a loss of $2,704 annually for the average nonunion worker.
The earnings loss is smaller for women because they were not as unionized as men in 1979. Weekly wages would be about 2% to 3% higher for women if union membership had stayed at 1979 levels, the report says.
About 10% of males in the private sector were union members in 2013, down from 34% in 1979. In that period, the share of women who belong to unions fell to 6% from 16%.
The prevalence of unions affects the pay of nonunion workers in various ways, the study says. Nonunion employers often raise their workers’ pay to foster loyalty and head off an organizing drive. Kodak deployed that strategy in highly organized New York State, the study says.
The paper was authored by Washington University sociologists Jake Rosenfeld and Patrick Denice, and Jennifer Laird, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
