Huff-Post: Why a Union-Friendly Economic Agenda Can Help Rebuild America's Middle Class

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beth-english/unions-middle-class_b_2356552.html

Beth English.Researcher, Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University

As America's economic recovery continues at a snail's pace, the fiscal cliff looms, and officials elected to office in November prepare to take office next month, protecting the rights of working people to organize and maintain their unions should be a focal point in the crafting of a broader domestic economic agenda. And with the New Year upon us, it affords us the chance to look back and see how our economic past impacts our future.

In the wake of the passage of Michigan's right-to-work-law, we have witnessed much handwringing on the left and back-slapping on the right that this decidedly blue state and bulwark of the American labor movement became the 24th state in the country to enact such legislation. The immediate and long-term consequences of the Michigan law remain to be seen, but few doubt that it will erode the influence of organized labor there, and possibly nationwide.

But importantly, our own history provides ample evidence that law and public policies such as these that effectively amount to a race-to-the-bottom for America's workers impede the growth of a robust middle-class, threatening the United States' economic health and the ongoing recovery.

While campaigning for president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for economic planning that would "build from the bottom up and not from the top down." Addressing a nation reeling from the Great Depression, he acknowledged the government couldn't spend its way out that crisis. Yet FDR eschewed policies where relief came only to those at the "top of the social and economic structure" -- sound familiar? -- and instead proposed permanent relief to those on the lower economic rungs of society.

FULL story at link.