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And what if the wave got bigger? In July, the Washington, D. C.-based Economic Policy Institute released a report estimating that union density at 30 percent would result in sweeping societal change: 14.5 percent wage increases for all workers in every state, averaging $ 7,700 more annually for the median worker; a significant decrease in income inequality, shifting $ 1.2 trillion to workers annually; a narrowed racial wage gap; an increase in the number of Americans with health insurance; and greater civic participation.
“ A lot of our research points to the reality that unionization has been probably the most effective vehicle historically for workers to transform their individual conditions within a particular workplace, but also to broadly reshape imbalances of power in the economy,” says Jennifer Sherer, deputy director of EPI’ s Economic Analysis and Research Network.“ This report tries to analyze what’ s happening in the world as it is, and produce a vision of what the world could look like under different conditions.”
Experts say getting to that worker’ s paradise would probably necessitate changing federal labor laws. The most recent effort is the Faster Labor Contracts Act, a bipartisan bill which would mandate roughly a four-month deadline for a new union and employer to reach an initial collective bargaining agreement. If the parties fail to strike a deal, a federal arbitration panel would set the contract’ s terms.
“ Historically, the last three attempts to reform labor laws have crashed and burned. Our minimum wage is still so low, and workers just have not had much federal support in a long time,” says Nat Baldino, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy.“ But states can play a big role. There are a lot of efforts of step in and be the Department of Labor or the NLRB in the absence of them. [ State ] trigger laws protect private sector workers, so if a federal
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