Good morning. Is the Democratic Party
again starting to pay more attention to
labor unions?
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A
U.A.W. worker at a meeting of
the labor committee of the
Michigan House of
Representatives this week.Emily
Elconin for The New York Times |
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For
decades, the Republican Party has seemed
to care more about labor unions than the
Democratic Party has.
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Many
Republican officials treat organized labor
as their political enemy. When Republicans
gain power in a state capital, they often
try to pass “right to work” laws meant to
shrink unions. And these laws have their
intended effect: They reduce the number of
workers who belong to unions, reduce
Democrats’ share of the vote in elections
and reduce the number of working-class
candidates who run for office, academic
research has found.
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Modern
Democratic politicians, on the other hand,
have often sat out the political battle.
Every Democratic president for decades,
including Joe Biden, has said he favors a
federal law to make it easier for workers
to organize — and each of those presidents
has failed to pass such a law. Democratic
leaders in Congress also have not made
labor law a priority. Nor have many
Democratic governors.
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Jamelle
Bouie, a Times Opinion columnist, captured
this asymmetry
when he wrote: “Republicans and
other conservatives know who their enemies
are — they know that organized labor is a
key obstacle to dismantling the social
safety net. The question is whether
Democrats understand that their fortunes
are also bound up in the fate of workers.”
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But events
in Michigan this week raise the question
of whether Democrats are starting to
change their approach and devote more
attention to strengthening organized
labor.
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The
labor committee of the Michigan
House.Emily
Elconin for The New York Times |
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On
Wednesday, Democrats in the Michigan House
of Representatives
passed a bill repealing the
right-to-work law that Republicans
enacted in 2012. For the new bill to
become law, the State Senate, which
Democrats also control, would need to pass
it and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer would need to
sign it, as she has signaled she will.
Democrats gained control of the Michigan
House and Senate in last year’s elections.
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If the
bill did become law, it would be one of
only a handful of repeals of any statewide
right-to-work laws. “It’s a huge deal,”
Jake Grumbach, a political scientist at
the University of Washington who has
studied the issue, told me.
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Currently,
27 states have such laws, including most
of the South and the Great Plains, as well
as Indiana and Wisconsin. Whenever
Republicans control both the legislature
and governorship in a state, they
typically push for a right-to-work law.
Yet when Democrats have taken control of a
state government, they have sometimes left
the law in place, as was the case in
Virginia a few years ago, Grumbach noted.
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The
details of the right-to-work debate can
be technical, but they’re worth taking a
minute to understand. Above all, the laws
mandate that nonunionized workers cannot
be required to pay the equivalent of union
dues, even if the union is negotiating pay
and benefits on the workers’ behalf. Many
contracts call for a company’s management
and union to agree on pay and benefits for
all workers in a given job category,
regardless of their union status.
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The
central argument in favor of the laws is
based on individual freedom: Why should
workers have to pay dues to a union to
which they don’t belong? The very term
“right to work,” coined by a Dallas
Morning News editorial writer in 1941,
evokes freedom. The central argument
against the laws is grounded in economics:
They allow nonunionized workers to become
free riders, receiving the advantages of
collective bargaining without paying for
it.
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Wherever
you fall on this debate, the laws clearly
have an impact. They lead union membership
to decline, as more workers choose not to
pay dues and instead take home more money
in the short term. Eventually, the laws do
enough to weaken unions that they
disappear from some workplaces.
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In the
long term, the decline of unions tends to
hurt workers: A large recent study,
consistent with other research, found that
union members made
about 20 percent more on average
than nonunionized workers who were
otherwise similar. The additional wages
often came out of corporate profits, which
explains why the decline of unions has
contributed to rising economic inequality.
The shrinking of unions effectively
redistributes income from low- and
middle-income workers to affluent
investors.
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(In
a new Times Magazine essay about
American poverty, the sociologist
Matthew Desmond writes: “With unions
largely out of the picture, corporations
have chipped away at the conventional
midcentury work arrangement, which
involved steady employment, opportunities
for advancement and raises and decent pay
with some benefits.”)
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Then there
are the political effects of unions. They
help turn out voters and focus voters on
economic issues. That focusing role is
significant because of a fact that I’ve
often covered in this newsletter:
Many working-class Americans hold
progressive economic views while also
being religious, patriotic and socially
moderate.
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When a
labor union talks to these voters about
economic policy, they become more likely
to vote for a Democrat. When they are not
in a union, they may instead be swayed to
vote Republican by their evangelical
church or Fox News. A 2018 academic study,
comparing counties on either side of a
state border, found that the passage of a
right-to-work law reduced the Democratic
Party’s vote share by about three
percentage points on average.
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The repeal
of Michigan’s right-to-work law would be
significant on its own, given the size of
the state’s economy and its importance in
presidential elections. It would also
highlight a larger trend: The Democratic
Party again seems to be
emphasizing organized labor, as it did in
the mid-20th century.
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Biden may
have failed to pass a federal law making
it easier for workers to join unions, but
he has
repeatedly talked about their importance
and included pro-union provisions in other
bills. “He is paying more authentic
attention to the needs of working people
to have unions than the last three
Democratic presidents have,” Michael
Podhorzer, a former political director of
the A.F.L.-C.I.O., told me.
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What’s next in
Michigan:
The state senate seems likely to
vote on the bill next week.
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President
Biden in Philadelphia yesterday.Doug
Mills/The New York Times |
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- Biden released his
proposed budget. It would reduce
the deficit through a minimum tax on
billionaires and a higher tax on
corporate stock buybacks.
- The budget
won’t become law but offers a preview
of the populist themes Biden will
probably highlight in a re-election
campaign.
- Congressional Republicans
called Biden’s plan “a road
map for fiscal ruin.” Republicans have
not yet released their own budget
plan.
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Greg
Mascher, an East Palestine
resident, with his
granddaughter.Brian
Kaiser for The New York Times |
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Many
American men
are falling behind in education,
employment and health,
Richard Reeves argues on “The
Ezra Klein Show.”
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Ravenna
High School’s band.Ashley
Markle for The New York Times |
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Lives Lived:
Ian Falconer designed opera sets,
drew covers for The New Yorker and created
“Olivia,” a children’s book about a piglet
that became a sensation. Falconer
died at 63.
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Robert
Blake portrayed gritty characters, but a
trial and acquittal in his wife’s murder
eclipsed his acting career. Blake
died at 89.
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SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC
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Heels out:
North Carolina fell to Virginia in
the A.C.C. conference tournament
yesterday, all but
sealing its exclusion from the
N.C.A.A. tournament this year.
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Ostrich
feathers on a coat at Valentino.Simbarashe
Cha for The New York Times |
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The winter
fashion season wrapped up this week, and
if there was a central trend among the
shows in Paris, it was feathers,
The Times’s Elizabeth Paton writes:
layered goose plumes on tops and pants, a
large ostrich feather rippling out from
pantsuits and more. “In our world of
oppression, pressure and anxiety, we need
freedom, lightness and the ability to
fly,” the founder of a Ukrainian fashion
label said.
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Craig Lee
for The New York Times |
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The
pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was
unequaled.
Here is
today’s puzzle.
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Thanks
for spending part of your morning with
The Times. See you tomorrow.
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P.S. “Sin
Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano,” a
Times documentary about a Hollywood fixer,
premieres tonight.
Watch the trailer.
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Matthew Cullen,
Lauren Hard, Lauren Jackson, Claire
Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom
Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu
contributed to The Morning. You can
reach the team at [log in to unmask].
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