In recent years, academics and policymakers in the United States have been grapping with an economic mystery: why, even though the U.S. economy has grown in recent decades, wages have remained stagnant?Many researchers have discussed one particular explanation: the decrease in the bargaining force of U.S. staff due to the decline of the union club and the increase in outsourcing.Workers have benefited less from economic expansion because their ability to negotiate higher wages has weakened.Instead, significant gains went to investors and managers, and inequality in the United States exploded.
Other industrialized countries have also noticed an increase in inequality, however, the decline in race strength is especially pronounced in the United States.From the 1980s to the last decade of 2010, the percentage of age of work at the source of income in the United States, essentially, the% of the overall source of income that ends up going to staff – fell to 4% of age points, a decrease of billions of dollars a year During the same period , U.S. staff have lost their main protections: the pool of collective agreements less than 12% of staff (and only 7% of personal sector staff) in the United States, compared to 98% in France, 80% in Italy and 56% in Germany.
Reducing staff in the United States is helping to explain the country’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic relative to its peers. No other industrialized country has so disastrously controlled the pandemic. Certainly, many points have contributed to america’s weak reaction to the US.But it’s not the first time To the crisis: First, the useless and counterproductive leadership of the White House, but also the false steps and structural racism, and countries in Europe and elsewhere that have strong protections for employees continue to experience sporadic increases in new coronavirus infections that can lead to greater spread.But the coronavirus’s trajectory to date suggests that a country whose staff lacks economic and political strength cannot respond to the crisis almost as temporarily or absolutely as its counterparts.
Since its inception, COVID-19 has created endangered jobs.A Harvard University study on the initial spread in Asian countries estimated that work-related transmission accounted for up to 47.7% of the first cases.From the beginning, the virus has spread smoothly in jobs in the United States, adding among health personnel, bar and restaurant staff, transit operators, processing plant staff.meat and others. Today, nearly six months after the start of the pandemic, the U.S. government still has little on the terms employers place on its staff.The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, for example, refused to publish emergency protection criteria after the outbreak began.Influential donors and federal indifference to union demands have allowed OSHA to mount a passive reaction to the crisis.With little staff due to years of defeats, the firm did not publish its first coronavirus-related quote until the end of May.
The lack of legal protections not unusual in other countries has put employee safety at further risk. The United States does not have a federal law that establishes certain paid leave under conditions of poor physical condition, and the transitional measures that are followed to deal with the consequences of COVID-19 have major shortcomings: forcing many employees with poor physical condition and at risk of being in poor physical condition or wasting their wages. 88% of US personnel who do not have union representation are hired “at will,” which means that employers have wide latitude to fire them. Hospital and facility staff have been retaliated against for raising physical fitness disorders, and as a result, many employees may be afraid to speak up when they feel unsafe.
European governments, for their part, have moved more temporarily to establish new criteria in the office after the epidemic. Even before the pandemic, European staff worked in an environment where they had more voice in the situations of their work.Occupational Safety and Health has published COVID-19 standards that state: “The participation of staff and their constituents in the control [of protection and fitness at work] is the key to good fortune and a legal obligation.”Companies and trade unions have jointly advised protection protocols in industries such as food and beverage manufacturing.In Germany, for example, forums that constitute either the interests of employers and staff are guilty of maintaining adequate labour criteria.The practice is so entrenched that when the pandemic occurred, the Germans did not care so much about whether staff were entitled to participate in the determination of execution situations as if that right were sufficient if the compulsory meetings were conducted by videoconference.
When personnel have no say in determining operating conditions, the effects can be dire. The US meat packaging industry offers an uplifting narrative. COVID-19 destroyed slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, where staff were stuck face to face in assembly lines. Federal and state regulators and meat plant owners ignored court cases from staff and unions. Instead, the corporations reportedly presented “liability bonuses” to staff to continue exhibiting themselves to cadres and to staff disciplined for not having scheduled shifts. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nine percent of all known meat processing personnel in states had contracted COVID-19, and of those diagnosed, 87 percent were from racial or minority groups. ethnic.
Europe’s meat packaging industry has suffered its own outbreaks, largely due to weaker protections for migrant staff, however, until early June it had documented a ninth case more than its US counterpart.It employs approximately two-thirds of the number of people.While hot spots persist, the European reaction to these outbreaks has been much more aggressive: the governments of the two countries with the largest meat industries, Germany and Spain, have extended new rights to hire staff that in the past had been excluded from work..protections and were the maximum vulnerable to COVID-19.
A story that spanned other industries, adding retail, construction, cleaning services, and healthcare: the pandemic exposed a lack of coverage for American staff while encouraging European staff to push for greater criteria and new rights.In the United States and Europe, for example, Amazon staff have been involved in paint stops and protested against operating conditions.Amazon fired protest leaders in the United States (claiming they violated some corporate policies), but the French court helped Amazon’s French staff force the company to negotiate new defense criteria.
Safer jobs make society safer.Improving criteria in industries where staff are in contact with the general public reduces the threat of transmission to the network as a whole.”communities where meat processing plants were located, and places where opening bars and restaurants has created spikes in infections among staff.Not protecting certain personnel means controlling the virus.”
Relative labor shortages in the United States also threaten to undermine the country’s overall economic recovery. The pandemic has slowed economic activity: GDP fell by 9.5% in the United States and 12.1% in euro dominance at the time of the 2020 quarter but the weaker position of U.S. staff means the U.S. is likely to be slower to regain its economy.Their European counterparts.
The United States has delivered maximum relief to staff through unemployment insurance bills for those who have lost their jobs.In March, Congress approved a historic expansion of the program, expanding the amounts of benefits of obtaining benefits and making eligibility requirements more flexible.The benefits accounted for 15.6% of total wages and the source of wage income in the United States, more than six times the pre-crisis peak of 2.5%.
Unemployment insurance has been a major lifeline for the U.S. economy and millions of employees, but many Americans have struggled for weeks or even months to achieve those bills through a ruined public infrastructure: computers that process unemployment insurance in many states still have the programming of the 1960s.and the fact that the formula makes it difficult for others to access benefits in the first place. Since the creation of unemployment insurance during the New Deal, when segregationist legislators deliberately excluded agricultural and domestic staff from the program, various provisions have done more In addition, the formula encourages employers to question staff statements (by linking employer taxes to the number of employees claiming benefits) and prevents staff from downloading assistance where they can simply increase their bargaining power For example , the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of Labor, have not been able to doBut it’s not the first time He has argued that states can nullify the benefits of others who refuse to repaint during the pandemic, even those who care will be dangerous.
Expanded unemployment benefits would expire at the end of July, and conservative lawmakers insisted they were too generous.Millions of unemployed Americans suddenly saw their income fall through $600 a week, as any momentum for a recovery slowed.President Donald Trump has tried to raise unemployment less through a presidential memorandum, but this effort is likely to provide inadequate short-term relief.It also blocked the legislative procedure needed to extend bills that were at the center of America’s initial reaction.to the pandemic, even though the unemployment rate is still above 10%.
Other industrialized countries, on the other hand, have put more resilient systems in position, with the greater participation of painters.European countries already have more functional unemployment insurance systems than the United States.Many of these countries, in addition to Belgium and Denmark, which use the “Ghent system,” in which trade unions are guilty of administering unemployment benefits, have built systems based on the imperative to accompany rather than exclude staff.European countries have also established or strengthened systems that send cash to staff while on the payroll, through so-called agreements or exchange of paintings.short-term compensation. The German government is prepared to expand its extension of the Kurzarbeit (“short tables”) programme from 12 to 24 months, which allows companies to lay off staff, rather than fire them, helping them offset the loss of profits due to reduced operating hours.These measures have helped minimize economic disruptions during unprecedented closures, creating a clearer path between crisis and recovery.
These assistance systems explain why official unemployment rates are higher this spring in Europe than in the United States, despite similar falls in GDP.Moreover, these shared work approaches, generally negotiated jointly through employers and trade unions, reflect the joint commitment of the government and the personal sector to maintain the source of staff’s income during the crisis What distinguishes these systems from their U.S. counterparts is not that their benefits are necessarily more beneficial: at least this spring, unemployed American staff gained a little more benefits in proportion to their previous source of income than Europeans unemployed, but how do they make sure that, from company to business, staff stay more connected to the workforce and actually get the bills they are owed.
The role of force of personnel in the operation of these systems is evident in an unappreciated fact: the fundamental mechanisms of European-style regimes are held in the United States, but they have not been used in a way that benefits the public. the consumers. personal. Before the crisis, 27 states had worked-sharing agreements, under which staff can get unemployment benefits to compensate for reduced hours; and the Paycheck Protection Program, as the US Small Business Support Program calls it, generated $ 660 billion for businesses as a component of a technique designed to prevent layoffs. But according to the US Job Decomponent, only about 450,000 employees of the 28 million employees claiming unemployment benefits in the United States are enrolled in job-sharing systems, and there is little evidence for the concept that The P3s and other business assistance systems have really encouraged employers. to retain staff. Airlines were one of the few industries in which the government had been insisting on strict regulations related to employee retention. Unsurprisingly, flight attendant unions and other airline employee teams have played a vital role in the aid negotiations.
To restart a weakened economy, the government will want to control the virus and genuinely supply staff, families, and small businesses.A robust program is desired to maintain staff income that allows staff to stay at home when social esttachment is in effect and return to paintings when it is not.Without bringing personnel to the table, it will be difficult for the United States to make those systems as effective as possible.
And not offering forged and trustworthy to staff will have economic consequences that pass far beyond the unemployed themselves.Helping idle staff not only is helping them and their families, yet also plays an vital “countercyclical” serve as in times of economic downturn.These staff are most probably to spend the cash they obtain quickly, which is helping stimulate client activity, which in turn can lead to a broader recovery.But if the unemployed are not truly able to access benefits – or if those benefits expire too early in the recession – then other folks will be less most probably to spend and the economy.The United States has failed to stay staff on payrolls or supply sufficiently comprehensive and sustainable monetary to staff.As a result, the country dangers causing greater hurt to small businesses and local communities and a developing economic recession.
As many economists have emphasized, protective public aptitude and support for the economy in the event of a pandemic are not mutually exclusive objectives.staff in decision-making. Federal and state efforts to “reopen” the economy have rarely included more than superficial consultations with staff.
The debate over the reopening of schools in the United States and how to do so provides a useful counter-example: teachers are unionized at the highest rates compared to other sectors of the U.S. economy (approximately 70% of public school teachers, for example, belong to unions in some districts, teachers protested hasty plans, and received protection for both staff and students , but teachers have struggled to achieve such measures in states where their unions have less power.The fact that teachers have the slightest opportunity to participate in such decisions is in stark contrast to almost every other part of the U.S. economy.
U.S. policies in the wake of the pandemic treat maximum staff as unnecessary and, in doing so, put the public at risk.State governments have been slow to impose or even inspire the mask costume, letting stores impose their use.Lawmakers have tried to exclude businesses from liability even if staff, consumers or their families contract the virus in an office or workplace, giving priority to commercial homeowners fighting coVID-19 risk.
Many European countries, on the other hand, have a long-standing style of ”social dialogue” in decision-making on primary social and economic issues, in which workers’ and employers’ organizations are involved in the negotiations on primary policies.and shows how the union club can, in the words of politologists John Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, inspire others to carry out movements that are “in the interests of others” outside their own organization by expanding their sense of fate similar to owning them. Reforming labour legislation to facilitate the organization and club of workers in industry unions is a very important step not only to increase wages or reduce inequality, but also to build a society that is more resilient to crises.
Recent decades have shown that societies become more unequal when staff have less power.This year’s difficulties suggest that employee empowerment will also be a country’s ability to triumph over the havoc of a pandemic.
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