unions

(Photo credit: Flickr user MSVG)

Chicago’s teachers aren’t fighting just for their own wages and benefits. They’re on strike for better schools for students, too. One of the Chicago Teachers Union’s (CTU) demands is to install air conditioning in schools, particularly poorer ones that may lack these amenities.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel (whose net worth is estimated at $14 million) downplayed these teacher concerns on behalf of poor children.Ai??”It’sAi??71 degreesAi??outside,” he said. “You don’tAi??go onAi??strikeAi??for air conditioning.”

But lest the mayor forget, seasons change. Earlier, in July, there was a heat wave so severe that school officials decided to cancel classes at 21 schools one Friday that were serving summer school students. The reason why? They lacked air conditioning. The heat wave this summer was so intense that there were actually a number of deaths attributed to it in the city.

CTU is fighting for everyone in the city — teachers, students, parents. Mayor Emanuel may feel comfortable with the fact that some of his city’s schools without air conditioning can get so hot that officials canceled school to protect the health of their students, but the CTU isn’t.

If the strike ends up getting air conditioning installed in these boiling schools, the kids will be the first ones to benefit as a result.

Christopher Fallon

RepublicanAi??MassachusettsAi??Senator Scott Brown is in a tough race against progressive champion Elizabeth Warren. On Friday, Brown rolled out an endorsement by state representative Chris Fallon. “We know where your heart is, and your heart is with the people of Massachusetts – particularly, the people of Malden,” said the state rep. of Brown.

But Fallon and Brown’s hearts have been in very different places, when it comes to an issue the people of the state should be very concerned about: union rights.

Last year, there was a rollback of labor rights in the state, as some municipal employees faced cutbacks in their right to collectively bargain over health care. Although the majority of Democrats and Republicans in the state house voted to support this rollback of rights, Fallon was one of a minority of Democrats who opposed the changes and proudly stood with organized labor.

Meanwhile, Scott Brown has proved antagonistic to labor unions. He backed Scott Walker’s budget that decimated public employee collective bargaining in Wisconsin, calling it the “will of the people.” At the height of the battle over bargaining rights in the state, he appeared on MSNBC and actually praised Scott Walker. Watch it:

Brown started his anti-union record very early after being elected. He even demanded to be seating as soon as possible to stop the nomination of pro-union Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

With the endorsement of Brown, Fallon is turning his back on an important constituency that he stood with in the past. It’s important forAi??MassachusettsAi??voters to not let Fallon’s endorsement whitewash Brown’s record (and it’s important for Fallon’s district to remember this next time he’s up for re-election).

(For the record, Brown actually lost much more high-profile support over his …

A union worker at a conference in DC (Photo credit: Flickr user Medill DC)

Today is Labor Day, a federally recognized holiday designated to celebrate the American worker. But while millions of Americans are enjoying the day off, it’s important to remember where this holiday came from.

InAi??1887Ai??Oregon began the first formal ai???Labor Dayai??? and by 1897 President Glover ClevelandAi??made it a federal holiday, reacting to pressure from unions following the contentious Pullman Strike.

But it wasn’t just this day off that unions gave Americans. Here’s some other things we can thank unionized workers for:

The Weekend:Ai??The ultra-right Mises Institute notes that in the relatively labor union-free year of 1870, the average workweek for most Americans wasAi??61 hoursAi??ai??i?? almost double what most Americans work now. In response to this, in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged inAi??massive strikesAi??in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. ByAi??1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for workers to spend time with their families and engage in other leisurely activities.
Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage:Ai??As unions grew in numbers in the 1930s and 40s, there was a rapid expansion of employers offering their employees health care. As Health Affairs notes, “In industries dominated by a few giant firms, unions used their ai???countervailing powerai??? to make the firms share some of their potential profits with workers in the form of high wages and generous health insurance benefits. “
Ending Child Labor:Ai??Ai??The first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national …

The middle class and unions are inextricably linked. As union membership has declined income inequality has skyrocketed, as this chart from the Center for American Progress shows:

A new report released today by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows another benefit from being in a union. The report looked at workers with comparable “experience, education, region, industry, occupation, and marital status” and found that similar workers in a union earned on average 13.6 percent more than their non-union colleagues. Here’s a table from the report showing some of these results:

The message of these stats is clear. If you want to rebuild the middle class, start by rebuilding unions. Read the full EPI report on unions and inequality here.