When I went to college at the University of Chicago, there was a professor of economics there who won the Nobel Prize, named Milton Friedman. Professor Friedman wrote a paper documenting that unions, in general, provided increased wages, not just for their employees and members, but for nearby employees who were not unionized. He argued that unions benefitted all workers by forcing other employers to improve the employment standards in order to keep their workers.
Unions have correctly taken credit for ending child labor, getting us a 40 hour work week, and a great many national holidays.
While I was in college, I was a member of a union while I worked at a Georgia Pacific mill.
Unfortunately, unions have been under attack. This is particularly true for public employee unions, and the Supreme Court dealt a blow to them in Janus v. AFSCME. Many unions thought that would be a death blow to many of the public unions in our country. Here, however, is an interesting column by Dana Milbank documenting just the opposite.
Although I do not represent unions directly, I do have the opportunity to represent a good many union members. I also get to work with union leadership on workers’ compensation issues and the leadership we are working with now understands the importance of workers’ compensation and is working very hard to help us improve the workers’ compensation system for workers.
