Attention: All Interested Individuals,

– If you are unemployed, laid-off, looking for your first job, or simply want to advance or change your career, this is the right place to start.  Check out the resources located on this site, to find out more about Philadelphia job openings, job training programs, career trends. Visit a PA CareerLink® center near you. All services are free to Philadelphia residents.

Source – http://www.philaworks.org/

By Richard Freeman, Eunice Han, Brendan Duke, David Madland

– Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments for Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association—a case that could further erode union coverage. Now, new economic research from the Center for American Progress strongly suggests that one-third of the decline in the share of middle class workers is directly tied to the decreasing share of workers in unions.

The analysis breaks down the falling share of middle-class workers into three factors associated with unions—the decline in the share of workers in unions, known as union coverage; a decline in the share of union workers who are middle class relative to nonunion workers, known as the union equality effect; and the interaction between the decline in union coverage and the union equality effect. By using an economic technique known as a shift-share decomposition, the research finds a decline in union coverage accounting for 35 percent of the falling share of middle-class workers and that the combination of the shrinking share of union workers and the reduction in the union equality effect explains almost half of the decline in middle-class workers.

The United States has long called itself a middle-class nation. But that statement is less true today than it was 30 years ago.

The most widely used barometer of the financial health of the middle class—real median household income as published by the U.S. Census Bureau—has barely grown over the last thirty years. At the same time, the middle class has been hollowed out as incomes have polarized, with more households at the top and the bottom and fewer in the middle of the income distribution. A recent report by the Pew Research Center showed that the share of adults in the middle class—defined as adults whose households make between 67 percent and 200 percent of median U.S. income—fell from 61 percent in 1971 to just 50 percent in 2014.

Unsurprisingly, the same trends of slow growth and rapid polarization are also found in the main source of middle-class income: wage and salary earnings. Median weekly earnings of full-time workers grew 18 percent between 1984 and 2014 despite a 79 percent increase in labor productivity in the United States. As with the income distribution, the earnings distribution has polarized: the share of full-time workers who make between 67 percent and 200 percent of median U.S. earnings fell from 68 percent in 1984 to 60 percent in 2014.

This report examines the role that the decline of labor unions over the past 30 years has played in the hollowing out of the U.S. earnings distribution. We* expect that the decline of unions has reduced the share of middle-class workers because union workers are more likely to be middle class than nonunion workers. Unions represent workers in the middle of the income distribution, which raises the earnings of workers who would otherwise fall below the middle-class threshold. We call the higher share of union workers among middle-class workers the union equality effect.

In this report, we use a technique—known as a shift-share decomposition—that breaks down the falling share of middle-class workers into three factors associated with unionism:

• The first part is due to the decline in union coverage, namely the fact that when a smaller share of workers are in unions, fewer workers benefit from the union equality effect.
• The second part is due to a decline in the union equality effect. As earnings have polarized over the past 30 years, the middle-class share of union workers fell from 83 percent to 72 percent, which is more than the decrease in the share of nonunion workers in the middle class. This reduces the union equality effect.
• The third part is associated with the interaction between the decline in union coverage and the union equality effect.

The decomposition leaves a residual part with no direct connection to unionism that is instead due to the decline in the middle-class share of nonunion workers.

Our main findings are that the decline in union coverage accounts for 35 percent of the falling share of middle-class workers and that the combination of the shrinking share of union workers and the reduction in the union equality effect explains almost half of the decline in middle-class workers. To the extent that union-induced wage increases spill over from union to nonunion workers and that union advocacy produces economic and social policies that benefit the middle class, our results understate the impact of the weakening labor movement on the hollowing out of the U.S. middle class.

Source – https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2016/01/13/128366/what-do-unions-do-for-the-middle-class/

By John George

– A majority of the registered nurses at Delaware County Memorial Hospital have voted to join PASNAP, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals.

The vote, in a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board on Jan. 15 and Jan. 16, was 164 to 130 in favor of unionization.

Angela Neopolitano, a registered nurse who has worked at the Drexel Hill, Pa., hospital for 34 years, said the vote followed concerns expressed by the nurses about “staff and other working conditions” and a desire to have a voice in the pending sale of Crozer-Keystone Health System, Delaware County Memorial’s parent company, to Prospect Medical Holdings.

Crozer-Keystone, in a statement released Monday, said, “We are disappointed in the results of this election, because we do not believe a union is in the best interest of DCMH, its nurses, or the community. However, we respect the right of employees to choose union representation. After the results of the election are certified by the National Labor Relations Board, we will meet with the union to bargain in good faith. We look forward to working with PASNAP to negotiate a contract that is fair for nurses and the hospital.”

Prospect Medical Holdings of Culver City, Calif., signed a definitive agreement to acquire Crozer-Keystone earlier this month. The deal still requires regulatory approvals.

On Saturday, Crozer-Keystone opened a $16.5 million ambulatory care center — the 50,000-square-foot Crozer-Keystone at Broomall — at what had been a Pathmark grocery store on Lawrence Road near Route 3.

PASNAP already represents 650 nurses and paramedics employed by the Delaware County health system.

Bill Cruice, PASNAP’s executive director, said nurses are actively organizing to join PASNAP at two other locations: 850 Hahnemann University Hospital nurses will vote in an NLRB-conducted election this week, and 450 registered nurses at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children will vote in February.

Both Hahnemann and St. Christopher’s are owned and operated by Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC) of Dallas, Texas.

“Our union is growing and getting stronger because nurses know they need a strong, collective voice to effectively advocate for their patients and their profession,” Cruice said.

Source – http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/morning_roundup/2016/01/nurses-at-delco-hospital-vote-to-unionize.html

By IBEW Local 3, New York

– History is written by the winners and revised by the survivors. So don’t be surprised if you ask anyone under 40 years of age about Dr. Martin Luther King’s connection with labor and they come up blank.

Since U.S. school teach little if anything about labor history, nearly two generations of Americans have never learned that civil rights for black and white American Workers was high on King’s agenda.

“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief to the destitute and above all new wage levels that meant not mere survival, but a tolerable life.”

And here is another quote our children will never hear from politicians or educators:

The captains of industry did not lead the transformation to social progress; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shore not only itself but the whole society.”

Dr. King was quick to see through the “right-to-work” scam. Here’s how he described it:

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as “right-to-work”. It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. …Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone. Wherever these laws have passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are few and there are no civil rights”

Did Dr. King think union representation was a valuable commodity? Listen to this:

“Union meant strength and union recognition mean the employer’s acknowledgement of that strength, and the two meant the opportunity to fight again for further gains with united and multiplied power. As contract followed contract, the pay envelope fattened and fringe benefits and job rights grew to the mature work standards of today. All of these started with winning first union recognition”

And finally, unionism was still on his mind just hours before his death in Memphis in April, 1968, when he declared:

“Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point, in Memphis. We have got to see it through. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.”

Click Here – To Read a letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to IBEW Local 3 (NY), Business Manager, Harry Van Arsdale, Jr. on October 6, 1960 thanking him for his assistance and support. Also mentioned in the letter is renowned poet and important figure in the American Civil Rights movement, Maya Angelou who at the time was Dr. King’s Co-ordinator of his New York Office.

Source – http://www.local3.com/?q=node/5088