Should-Read: Larry Summers: America needs its unions more than ever

Should-Read: Larry Summers: America needs its unions more than ever: “I suspect the most important factor… is that the bargaining power of… workers has decreased… https://www.ft.com/content/180127da-8e59-11e7-9580-c651950d3672

…Technology has given employers more scope for replacing Americans with foreign workers, or with technology, or by drawing on the gig economy. So their leverage to hold down wages has increased. On the other [side]… it is harder than it used to be to move to opportunity…. Consumers also appear more likely now to have to purchase from monopolies…. On this Labor Day we would do well to remember that unions have long played a crucial role in the American economy in evening out the bargaining power between employers and employees…. The shrinking of the union movement to the point where today only 6.4 per cent of private sector workers—a decline of nearly two-thirds since the late 1970s—are in unions is one important contributor to the decline in the relative position of labour in general and those who work with their hands in particular. The decline in the unions is also a contributor to the pervasive sense that too often our political system is for sale to the highest bidder….

In an era when the most valuable companies are the Apples and the Amazons rather than the General Motors and the General Electrics, the role of unions cannot go back to being what it was. But on this Labor Day any leader concerned with the American middle class needs to consider that the basic function of unions—balancing the power of employers and employees—is as important to our economy as it has ever been.