As unions decline, so does worker power

Published June 8, 2018 This content is archived.

An opinion piece in The New York Times about the trend in recent years of shifting bargaining power to employers at the expense of employees, and a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that challenges the rights of public employee unions to collect dues from nonmembers who benefit from a union agreement, includes an email from Martha McCluskey, professor of law. “The decline in worker bargaining power in the United States is the cumulative effect of numerous small and large changes over recent decades reaching into almost every area of law and policy. This combines with a decline in the enforcement of existing laws that could protect workers’ bargaining power — laws protecting unions, laws against wage theft, nondiscrimination laws and more,” she writes.