AFGE Urges Congress to Avoid Government Shutdown
September 18, 2023
AFGE is urging members of Congress not to repeat the same mistakes they made a few years ago.
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Treasury Report: Unions Boost Middle Class, Economic Growth
September 11, 2023
Categories:
The Insider
The Department of Treasury has issued a report, the first of its kind, on labor unions and the impact on the American economy. The report’s comprehensive look at unions’ role in the economy confirms earlier studies by various organizations that labor unions indeed benefit not just union members but non-union members and the public as a whole. How so?
According to the report:
- Unions raise wages of members by 10-15%
- Unions improve benefits, including retirement plans, paid vacation, and paid sick leave
- Unions improve workplace rules such as grievance procedures, predicable schedules, and job security
- These benefits extend to non-union members as employers increase wages and benefits to attract workers
- Higher pay and job security lead to stable housing and more investment in education and other program.
“The empirical research on unions suggests that middle-class workers reap substantial benefits from unionization,” the report states. “These workplace improvements contribute substantially to middle-class financial stability and worker well-being. For example, one study has estimated that the average worker values their ability to avoid short-notice schedule changes at up to 20 percent of their wages.”
The report also listed a number of initiatives that Biden has done or planned to do to support unionization, such as:
- Passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would empower workers who want to form a union, prohibiting many of the union-busting tactics corporations use to prevent their employees from exercising their rights under the law.
- Increasing funding for the National Labor Relations Board (NRB), which enforces the National Labor Relations Act, the law that protects the right of private-sector workers to form and join unions.
- Signing the Executive Order 14003 to ensure federal employees’ rights to bargain collectively
- Creating the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment to work with agencies to support unionization using existing statutory authority
- Requiring employers to pay prevailing wages.
For AFGE and federal workers, there have been a number of things that the administration has done that have made a difference. The overall support for labor rights, for example, has had a huge impact on organizing.
“Each agency has its own culture and priorities, but they still take direction to varying degrees from the Executive,” said AFGE Membership and Mobilization Director Dave Cann. “When an administration is anti-worker rights and anti-union, agencies reflect that. It makes representation and engagement harder, chills union rights and scares workers and endangers activists.
“When an administration supports worker and union rights, it means having a partner in representation, a seat at the table and a voice on the job. Of course, it is easier to do union work without fear of unlawful retaliation sanctioned by an anti-worker administration.”
Biden’s executive orders reversing the previous administration’s anti-worker policies also made a huge difference.
“Getting down to business with federal employees as partners and not adversaries makes a big difference for everybody,” Cann added. “The federal government works better when it isn’t at war with itself. Furthermore, there are decades of studies showing labor-management partnership leads to more efficient, effective and frugal government and better service for the taxpayer.”
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