Tom Harkin: “I thank the Senator for going over that again, because as the Senator was going through these charts it reminded me of…”

“I thank the Senator for going over that again, because as the Senator was going through these charts it reminded me of an article I read, from May 23, 1994, ``Why America Needs Unions.'' The slide in unions has been linked to a lower level of blue-collar wages, a wider disparity in incomes, and a loss of benefits for workers. Let me read part of this article. It is titled ``Scary gap''--the gap in income. New research from respected economists of such schools as Harvard and Princeton shows that blue-collar wages trailed inflation in the 1980's, partly because unions represented fewer workers. The resulting drag on pay for millions of people accounts for at least 20 percent of the widening gap between rich and poor which has reached Depression-era dimensions. A person might think this came out of some labor-management periodical. This is Business Week, May 23, 1994. I think that even responsible capitalists and responsible free enterprise publications like Business Week are beginning to understand that when we start doing away with unions and start doing away with the bargaining power of unions, we will be in for real trouble. In fact, the article went on to say that: Free market economies need healthy unions. They offer a system of checks and balances, as former Labor Secretary George Shultz [a Republican] has put it, by making managers focus on employees as well as on profits and shareholders.”