A graph titled “unions and shared prosperity” by the Economic Policy Institute. It depicts the US labor union participation rate, which declined from a high of almost 35% in the 1940s to about 11% in 2008. This is compared to the share of income going to the top 10%, which was lowest when labor organization was highest but has spiked at the same time labor organization has collapsed.

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   HeavenlyPossum (heavenlypossum@kolektiva.social)'s status on Monday, 11-Dec-2023 00:06:27 JST HeavenlyPossum

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   One major difference between these two labor markets that could explain this discrepancy is in their differing levels of labor organization. In Denmark, about 70% of workers belong to labor unions, which are so large that they can bargain not just with individual firms but *sectorally,* setting wages and working conditions for entire sectors of the economy at a time.

   In contrast, only about 11% of US workers are unionized—and only about 6% of private sector workers, down from about 35% during the 1930s. As I discussed last time, divided and atomized workers, forced to bargain one-by-one, lack the power to negotiate for wages that their unionized peers do.

   We could imagine US workers unionized at the same rate as their Danish counterparts and collectively bargaining for an *effective* minimum wage that is dramatically higher than their *statutory* minimum wage. Maybe the lowest collectively bargained wage would be $16 or $18 or even higher.

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