South By North Strategies, Ltd.

E.J. Dionne opines on the contributions of organized labor to American economic history …

All but forgotten is the fact that our nation’s extraordinary prosperity from the end of World War II to the 1970s was in significant part the result of union contracts that, in words the right wing hated Barack Obama for saying in 2008, “spread the wealth around.” A broad middle class with spending power to keep the economy moving created a virtuous cycle of low joblessness and high wages.
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Between 1966 and 1970, as Gerald Seib pointed out last week in the Wall Street Journal, the United States enjoyed an astonishing 48 straight months in which the unemployment rate was at or below 4 percent. No, the unions didn’t do all this by themselves. But they were important co-authors of a social contract that made our country fairer, richer and more productive.
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There are many complicated reasons why these arrangements broke down, but I do not see things getting substantially better unless we find ways of increasing the bargaining power of wage-earners — precisely what Reuther and his fellowship dedicated their lives to doing.