Building Full Capacity Locals
Unions hold answer for lifting America’s middle class out of current economic malaise
Former University of Minnesota economics professor Dick Levins says unions will lead the fight for higher wages.
Dick Levins addresses support personnel, teachers and UniServ staff at a Building Full Capacity Locals training session on ESP issues and concerns.
“We’re about this far away from Willie Nelson holding a benefit concert for the middle class,” said former University of Minnesota economics professor Dick Levins, holding his forefinger and thumb a penny’s width apart.
Levins, the keynote speaker at a recent MEA Building Full Capacity Locals training session on ESP issues and concerns, said America’s middle class is in economic peril.
“Four years of economic growth has produced no gains for typical American workers,” Levins said. “Over four years, their average inflation-adjusted wage has risen by one penny an hour. One in four Americans is slipping out of the middle class.”
For years, the American middle class has heard “tax cut, tax cut, tax cut,” Levins said. “Cut taxes, and you’ll have more money in your pockets. Don’t worry about falling wages, we’re going to cut taxes even more.”
Yet, 66 percent of Americans rate economic conditions as fair or poor, and only 1 percent of Americans, the economic elite, are reaping the windfall from these tax cuts.
The middle class has received minimal benefit from this political and economic philosophy, he said.
“Corporate profits are at record highs, but no one’s talking about higher wages,” Levins said. “The super-rich aren’t involved in giving their money away (by paying higher wages). They’re taking their money and running. Anything but higher wages, because higher wages are the flip side of high corporate profits.”
The solution to the economic malaise for America’s middle class rests with unions, he said. Unions must play a strong role in our economy if the middle class is to survive and prosper. Unions balance the power of the super-rich cor- Former University of Minnesota economics professor Dick Levins says unions will lead the fight for higher wages. porations and lead to a healthy middle class economy.
“Unions are needed to fix the middle class,” Levins said. “Our middle class economy wasn’t built on cheap wages. Building unions is an important part of any policy that will have a permanent, positive effect on our economy.
“Unions fight for better wages. The middle class economy just didn’t happen— it’s union made. Unions built the middle class.”
