FOR Quick Launch: Tuesday, March 14, 2023
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New Investigation Exhibits Restoring Workers’ Rights Deal is Sensible Financial Policy
LANSING, Mich. – New examination from the Financial Policy Institute, a non-partisan imagine tank, exhibits the devastating impact Michigan’s 2012 “right to work” regulation has experienced on unionization, wages, and the middle class.
“An overpowering physique of investigation exhibits that states with anti-union guidelines proscribing workers’ collective bargaining legal rights finish up with reduce wages, worse added benefits, and increased office fatality prices,” mentioned Jennifer SHERER, Senior Condition Coverage Coordinator at the Economic Coverage Institute (EPI), who testified in aid of the Restoring Workers’ Legal rights deal in advance of the Senate Labor Committee this morning. “Michigan legislators are correct to prioritize restoring workers’ rights as an vital first stage toward addressing the many years of wage stagnation and growing profits inequality plaguing our economy. Other states ought to observe Michigan’s guide.”
For many years, Michigan boasted the optimum unionization fee in the country—and reasonably better median wages resulted for the state’s staff. New EPI research finds that as lately as 2005, Michigan’s unionization amount was 1.69 instances the nationwide charge, and the state’s median wage was 6% higher than the countrywide median. But just after lawmakers passed “right to work” in 2012 under strain from corporate distinctive interests, Michigan’s unionization charges declined more quickly than in the nation as a entire, and the state’s relative median wage fell with it. Now, Michigan’s median wage has fallen below the U.S. median. Attacks on Michigan workers’ legal rights have specifically benefited the rich—declines in unionization premiums have been accompanied by remarkable improves in money inequality, with 50 percent of all income in the point out now heading to the top 10%.
“This new analysis, which the Senate labor committee listened to nowadays, confirms what workers throughout Michigan have been observing for the earlier 10 years in their workplaces and communities,” said Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron BIEBER. “Decades of attacks on workers’ rights have dragged down wages, weakened positive aspects, and exacerbated the share of wealth heading to corporate elites like Betsy DeVos. The new professional-employee majorities in the legislature are using a historic phase to undo this damage and restore worker freedom in Michigan.”
The Michigan AFL-CIO, Michigan’s major labor firm, is a federation representing forty distinctive labor companies, eighteen diverse central labor councils, and 8 constituency teams symbolizing above 1 million union users and their households.
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