 Good afternoon. Welcome to EPI. I'm Naomi Walker. I'm EPI's Executive Vice President and I am so delighted to moderate our conversation today about the findings of the new Treasury Department's recent report on labor unions in the middle class. And this report is really the first of its kind for the Treasury Department and we are so excited to dig in and discuss it. I'm going to do a few logistical things before we go ahead and start with the panel. One, as always, please silence yourselves. And I wanted to let you know that anybody who registered will send you a link to the full report after the session. And then also please follow us at Economic Policy or check out our website where all of our research is posted at EPI.org. So joining us today, really excited to have the report's main author, Laura Fivesen, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Policy at the Treasury Department. And I also just want to shout out, there are a few of the researchers that helped on the report as well in the audience. Just give them a wave. Yay. We also have Raj Nayak, who is the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Labor. And then finally, of course, Heidi Shearholds, the President of the Economic Policy Institute. So I just want to say today's conversation comes at such an exciting time. This year's Summer of Strikes really marked a re-energized labor movement. We've seen auto workers and actors, health care workers, hotel workers, baristas, journalists, teachers, just to name a few, in motion, organizing and standing up for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. And so I want to highlight a couple of metrics that really help illustrate the upswing and labor activity. One, a recent EPI report found that workers are filing petitions for union elections and charges for violations of their right to organize and bargain collectively at the highest rates since the 1950s. The same report shows that after subsiding during the pandemic, the number of workers involved in major work stoppages grew by 50% in 2022 and looks on track to rise again in 2023. And then this has been much reported, but the latest Gallup poll finds that two-thirds of Americans approve of unions right now, which is a much higher percentage than it's been in for the past 60 years. So now I want to turn it over to Laura Fivesen from the Treasury Department to talk about this first of its kind report on labor unions in the middle class and how unions are good for the economy at large. Laura? Thank you so much for the great introduction. I just want to reiterate the thanks to my Treasury colleagues who contributed very much to this report who are sitting here. And also to the Department of Labor who worked with us very closely in making this report as well. So I'm going to just start by giving an overview of the report and then we'll sit down and have a conversation about it. So just the motivating questions that we addressed in the report, our one is focusing on the effect of what the evidence says about the effect of unions on the middle class. So how would a policy of strengthening labor unions help the middle class? And so I'll get to that. But then we really wanted to address this broader question of then how does a policy of strengthening labor unions affect the economy as a whole? So a lot of it may be no-brainer to some that unions help the workers that are in the unions, but it is not a no-brainer for many that unions can help the economy as a whole. And so we wanted to look at the evidence behind that and to describe the channels in which unions do help the economy. So we start with some motivating facts. And one is just what is going on with the middle class and what has been going on over the last many decades. So there have been both negative and positive trends occurring over the last 60 years. So on the negative side, stagnating wages, I'll show a chart on that in the next slide, higher cost of housing, education and health. So the costs of all three of these have risen faster than inflation, higher debt burdens and less retirement preparedness, and a decline in intergenerational mobility. So this is what middle class households are dealing with and it's in a worse situation now than 60 years ago. But there have definitely been positive trends as well, so I don't want to ignore those. Firstly, huge gains in increasing labor force opportunities across race and gender over the last 60 years. Much safer workplaces. Educational attainment is much higher now than it was 60 years ago. And then innovation and technology is accessible, driven prices down and accessible to many more people than it was at the time. And it exists more than it did at the time. So this is just kind of setting the scene of how we can think about what unions can do now. So first, let's see if I can skip forward one slide. Oh, I realized I skipped one. Okay. Let me just go back to this slide, which is kind of the overall motivating slide, which is looking at the union membership rate over time. That's the blue line. And the measure of income inequality. Here it's the income share of the top 1%, and that's the red line. On the bottom axis, that's time. So as you can see, the union membership rate peaked in the 1950s at about a third of workers, and it's been declining pretty steadily ever since then. Whereas inequality, or the income share of the top 1% fell to its lowest level in the mid-70s and has been increasing pretty much steadily since then. And so if we think of this measure or other measures of income inequality as kind of a measure of what's going on with the middle class relative to the upper class, what we can see is that there's this two things happening at one time, which is union membership declining and income inequality increasing. And so this raises this question of whether there's some causality here and whether strengthening unions may be able to at least stop that increase in inequality and perhaps reverse it. Okay. So I seem to be skipping two slides at a time, so I'll figure it out. But I wanted to get to the slide next. So just digging in a little bit to my comment about stagnating wages for the middle class. I think this is a useful chart to look at. So the black line is personal income per household. So it's total income in the economy divided by the number of households. And so that's a measure of the average income per household. The bottom, the red and the blue lines are median measures. So that's what's going on at the 50th percentile and a better measure of what's going on with the middle class. And you can see these really diverge. Since the late 1970s, average income per household has gone up, and this is all adjusted for inflation. It's gone up by 60 percent. But since the late 1970s, these median measures of income have gone up, but they haven't gone up by nearly as much. I mean, they were almost flat through the mid-2010s, and then they've increased a bit, but not much. So this kind of encapsulates what I mean by stagnating wages for the middle class. I'm figuring it out. So this is just when we looked at the evidence to start with. How do unions help the middle class? The evidence is pretty clear. So first, there's something that is in the economics literature called the Union Wage Premium, which is how much more do union workers make than non-union workers? And we want to think about this in a causal way, not just because union workers tend to be in higher wage occupations. We want to think about similar workers in the same occupation, but one is covered by union and the other isn't. And what we found is when we kind of compile all the evidence together, wages are about 10 to 15 percent higher. So the Union Wage Premium is a real thing, and it's a substantial amount. Secondly, on top of the increase in wages that union members... Wow, I don't know how I did that. Let me just see if... I'm not sure if it was me or someone else. I hope someone was trying to make a smiley face. I'm sure it was a smiley face. Nicole or Eve, we're having problems with the PowerPoint. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. So not only... So it is looking at too narrowly to look only at wages. So fringe benefits and other types of workplace environment is a clear difference between union workers and non-union workers. So for example, union members are 25... The rate of them having access to retirement benefits, health benefits, and life insurance benefits is 25 percentage points higher for union workers than non-union workers. Sick leave, it's 15 percentage points higher for union workers than non-union workers. So that is a big part of the benefits that union members experience. And then thirdly, it's a very important point that the benefits of unions do not just get felt directly by union workers, but they get felt... They're these spillovers to non-union workers as well. And that is... The evidence is very clear there that it is non-union workers can benefit when other workers around them become unionized. And that just extends where who feels these direct benefits of unions. So I wanted to make a point that a lot... What I've talked about so far are these financial benefits and the benefits in workplace environment, but there's also equality benefits across race and gender. So one, unions promote within firm equality. One way in which they do this is by having standardized pay schedules, for example. What this does is this takes away the advantage that people who are willing to negotiate for themselves may lead to higher wages for those people. And as there is evidence of, is that people who are more marginalized are less connected to the workforce, are less used to negotiating for themselves or less comfortable negotiating for themselves. So this is one way that unions promote within firm equality. And indeed there's some good empirical work showing that unions have closed race gaps and gender gaps in certain instances. And then now the modern union has a broad demographic reach. So when we think about unions, we shouldn't be thinking about one demographic group. Men and women are about equally covered by unions when we consider private and public together. And in fact, in the census demographics that I show here, the black veiled group has the highest union representation rate of 13% of workers. So now I just want to turn to talk about how unions can help the broader economy. So not just the middle class. So there's two main channels that we highlight and talk through in the paper. The first is income inequality. So by reducing in the ways that I've already talked about, but by reducing income inequality, that this can and does have positive effects on economic growth and economic resilience. By shifting income from the very top of the distribution to the middle or the bottom of the distribution, what we do is we alleviate borrowing constraints in the bottom half of the distribution. And now people are able to invest in business opportunities, invest in their own and their family's education and invest in investment opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do. And this all leads to a stronger economy. In addition, by reducing financial fragility in the bottom half of the distribution, what we do is we contribute to making people less sensitive to income loss that might happen in a recession, and that in turn reduces overall economic volatility. The second, I'm touching something and I apologize. I think there's, I've done something again, but the second thing, the second channel is through productivity. Now here it's not a straightforward unions always lead to a more productive workplace, but what we have seen is that there are many cases in which unions do lead to a more productive workplace, and here there's two channels within this. One is that happier employees that are more engaged in their workplace and more satisfied are themselves more productive. And then two is that by using the expertise of workers, the union is, can channel the expertise of workers into the processes in which workplaces are organized, and that in itself can take advantage of their expertise and lead to a more productive workplace. So just to conclude the conclusions of the report, strengthened unions have the potential to reverse some of the negative trends faced by the middle class since the 1970s that I highlighted earlier. And unions today are well positioned to capitalize on the positive trends. We have a more diverse workforce, we have more diverse representation within unions, and currently Biden-Harris policies are leading to a surge in manufacturing investment, so there's new workforce opportunities right now. And then lastly, this strengthened unions and expanded union membership would contribute to economy-wide growth and resilience. So thank you and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much, Laura, for that presentation. I'm so sorry we had so many technical issues, but you handled them great, so thank you. All right, I am going to dig in on a few questions and bring in Heidi and Raj, as well as kick in some questions, Laura, in just a minute. So my first question actually is for Heidi. And I talked a little bit about the increase in strike activity as I opened up, but what does that increase in strike activity actually mean for workers? Okay. Wait, if my mic is on? Yes, my mic is on. Sorry, it doesn't sound like it is inside of my own head. Okay, so I think the bottom line with the strike activity means for workers is higher pay. And I want to say that I think it's like, I mean, sort of along the lines of what you said, Laura, it may be kind of obvious that it's leading to higher pay for those workers who had a successful strike, but I also think it's leading to higher pay, and I'll give you some evidence of this, of worker, of non-union workers. And then I also will argue that I think it's going to lead to higher pay for workers into the future, and I just sounded like I'm going to do a whole dissertation and I'm going to go really fast on this. So the higher pay for the workers who are involved in these actions, it's just the contracts coming out of these successful actions have just much higher wage increases than those same unions had in prior contracts. And they're not just big across the board wage increases. They're also particularly large for groups of workers that employers had tried to sort of marginalize and separate off like part-time workers for UPS, for the workers who had been in the lower tier of workers at the automakers. They're also seeing improvements in safety and health like air conditioning in UPS trucks. They're seeing improvements in paid time off and on and on and on. So those workers are definitely seeing increases in paying job quality, but we're also seeing that it matters a ton for workers who are not in unions and it's like we're seeing the spillover effect play out. Toyota, not striking, not even unionized in response, clearly in response to the big wage increases that were won at Chrysler, GM, and Stellantis, they increased wages for Toyota workers. Like that is the spillover effect just happening. And I think that when I think of the spillover effect, I think of it as happening in two ways. One, two sort of mechanisms. One as being if I'm a nonunion employer, which I'm not, I'm a union employer. I'm a nonunion employer and the unions were paying their workers more. I may feel like I need to raise wage wages just to be able to get and keep the workers that I need. So there's that. And there's also the thing of if I'm a nonunion employer and I don't want a union, I may raise wages just to try to keep my workers from unionizing. That's known as the union's threat effect. And Sean Fain, who is the president of UAW, is really leaning into this. Like he actually said, and I have quote, when we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the big three, it will be with the big five or the big six. So that is, I also think that that's not a coincidence that that, he's saying those things and we're seeing Toyota give raises just voluntarily. And then the point I made about this strike activity, also potentially having impacts going into the future, it's because I think it is very much increasing the interest in unionization. And one thing that we know in your chart show right now, unionization rates are very low. There's a very small share of our workforce that grew up in a union household that has direct experience with unions. And so I think it, before the recent union activity and the sort of public discussion around this, it's entirely possible that when people weren't being treated fairly at work, the idea of unionizing or collective action may not have really crossed people's minds in a real way. But you better believe it that now with what has been happening and the public discussion around unions, that really is something that at least is crossing people's minds. And then a chunk of people will actually act on that. So I actually think this is just, I'll end here, that the activity that we're seeing now is affecting not just those workers who are winning gains through the strike activity, but also the workforce as a whole both now and into the future. Sorry for going so long. No, it's good stuff, Heidi. Thank you. So Raj, you know, the Biden-Harris administration has been credited as one of the most labor-friendly administrations in a very long time. So can you talk about some of the steps that the administration has taken to support workers and unions? Thanks, Naomi. I just want to say first of all, I'm so excited to be here at EPI with the EPI with Laura. So thank you for having me. If you want to pick one symbolic moment of the administration's commitment to labor, I think, you know, about six weeks ago when the president showed up on the picket line with UAW, that's a very visible symbol of the administration's commitment to workers. But that commitment does run deep as far as policy as well. I want to focus on, you know, there's a whole series of efforts that have been there to help promote worker empowerment. I want to focus on two that the Department of Labor in particular has been involved in, in addition to many others. The beginning of the administration, President Biden launched a task force on worker organizing and empowerment. Folks might know of this. This is the all-of-government approach to encouraging worker organizing and collective bargaining. President Biden often talks about this, right, and reminds us that the National Labor Relations Act policy isn't neutral, right, it's to encourage the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and protecting the exercise of workers who want to join unions. The task force is chaired by the vice president and vice chaired by the Secretary of Labor, the Department of Labor. We've been really lucky during this time. Our colleague Lynn Reinhardt, who worked with Secretary Walsh, now acting secretary, sued to steer this work for us. The task force, you know, had a lot of exciting elements which we can talk through. But one piece the task force asked for was for Treasury to look at the relationship between union density and middle class stability and growth. And so we're seeing the fruits of that here with this fantastic report coming from Treasury and really kind of mapping out this important research, and frankly the event today. But this sort of research in Treasury's report comes in an important time for the labor movement as we've been talking about. We're seeing firsthand through these recent strikes, through the sorts of wage growth that Heidi's talking about, that workers are feeling their power in a way that they haven't for a long time. They want more say in the workplace. Naomi mentioned the Gallup poll. There was a study a couple of years ago by some of our bipartisan academics of 4,000 workers who found that 52% of non-union workers want to be in a union. So it's not just like, oh, I like unions now. They're great. But 52% of workers say, I would love to be in a union. Compared to the 6% of private sector union rate we have in this country, it shows a lot of a gap. Unions are important for the Department of Labor's work too. You know, we don't enforce, you know, core labor, kind of the actual laws like the National Labor Relations Act. But for us, our workplace laws apply regardless of whether they're union or not. But we don't have all the resources in the world to actually enforce these laws. There's lots of evidence that when you have a union in the workplace, it makes the workplace safer. The workers are more likely to get paid. So unions for us are a very important compliment to our enforcement work. Just their presence means that the laws that we enforce are likely to be enforced. So for us, we know that there are a lot of workers who want to be in a union who don't know what their union rights are or how to get involved. So we've tried to think about ways we can help step in and help them understand that. With a lot of support from our Office of Labor Management Standards and Office of Public Affairs, we developed this website called the WorkCenter, which is WorkCenter.gov. It's a one-stop shop for knowing your rights about unions but also resources. It pulls together some of the academic studies. It pulls together some of the data and also points you toward how to, you know, if you want to form a union, like what steps do you take? So we have that research. There are a lot of EPI reports and there are other reports from kind of across the world on that research, on that website. In addition to the WorkCenter, you're taking other steps to promote worker empowerment. You know, the administration has completed regulations like the Davis Bacon regulations that think about, you know, especially as we have these broad investments right now, making sure that they lead to good jobs. We have other sorts of rulemaking around, you know, overtime, for example, you know, the National Labor Relations Board has, you know, has been funded and is doing some really exciting work, though it's independent of the department and really the administration overall. But we could talk about a lot more but it's really at the core of what we're trying to do. Great. Thank you so much, Raj. That was a great list. So Heidi, we've been talking about the higher levels of support, public support for unions and also about the low levels of union membership. So can you talk a little bit about what you make of those numbers and what additional steps need to be taken, both at the federal and state level, to more closely align this public support for unions with union membership breaks? Yes, I will. And I just, you giving those stats on the huge gap between the share of workers who are in unions and the share of workers who want to be in unions, like that gap, that gap is policy. That gap is our policy not actually effectively protecting workers' right to unionize. And so there's a lot of stuff that can be done. Everything that Raj mentioned as far as executive actions that can be taken at the federal level, we need to be full steam ahead of all those things. The, at the federal level legislatively, key steps are the protecting the right to organize act and the public service freedom to negotiate act. I do think we need to be and we all are clear-eyed about, you know, the potential for those, you know, for clear-eyed about what's going on in Congress, right? And so we also need to really focus on what can be done at the state level. At the state level that includes things like repealing so-called right to work laws. That just happened in Michigan a couple of months ago. That can happen more broadly. And passing laws that support collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. Those are the kinds of things that can happen also at the state level. And I think the key thing is that we need fundamental policy change to ensure that public policy supports unionization rather than what we see now, which is that public policy really is just a pretty intense impediment to unionization. Thank you. So this next question is for Laura and Raj. And Laura described some of this about how the report talks about establishing the state of the middle class. So can you talk a little bit more about where you see the state of the middle class, where middle class households are now. And then in addition to the changes that Raj laid out, are there changes in this administration to strengthen and expand access to middle class standard of living? Yeah. So the trends I discussed about the middle class were over the last 60 years. But I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk about what's happened over the last three years of the administration. So for sure I've described over the last 60 years these these kind of long standing negative and positive trends. Over the last three years actually and conditional, I mean particularly in light of the fact that we had an unbelievable shock to the economy and the pandemic, that the middle class has actually done remarkably well overall. I mean this is not the experience of every individual but and I'm talking about the kind of financial well-being of the middle class. So just to point out a few things, we actually, Treasury had a report that came out a few weeks ago about comparing this recovery to previous recoveries across race. And what we found, what we saw in that is that home ownership rates for all races are higher than they were in 2019. So before the pandemic. I mean this is huge contrast to what happened in the Great Recession where there was a huge decline in home ownership rates. Real wages, so these are wages that are real median wages. So this is for the median worker, their wage that is adjusted for inflation are higher than they were pre-pandemic. Business ownership rates are much higher for black and Hispanic households than they had been before the pandemic. And again this will be small businesses, so this will mainly be in the middle class. And then lastly, wealth has actually, wealth adjusted for inflation between 2019 and 2022 increased 37 percent which is the highest three-year increase in the history of, in the recorded history of the survey that came out a few weeks ago about measuring household wealth. So we, there have been some positive changes over the last three years in terms of the financial well-being of the middle class. And this is, as talked about already, there's this approval, highest approval rating for unions as there ever has been. I mean this is a great time to capitalize on kind of the positive trends over the last three years. There's a long way to go. I mean you can't combat a 60-year trend in three years but there's been some positive movements over the last three years. That's great. Raj, do you want to add anything? I might just chime in. I feel like we have an opportunity here with the once-in-a-generation investments and what we call the Invest in America agenda, right? Between Build, Chips and IRA, we have trillions of dollars in the economy and the opportunity to really leverage those dollars to create good jobs. We launched this Good Jobs initiative which really brings together work that we've done for a long time but kind of putting it in one place and saying this is a place where our Wage and Outer Division can provide compliance assistance and they can kind of help other agencies make sure they're getting the prevailing wage requirements right on new projects. Our Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs can work with developers to make sure that they're doing the things they need because we're drawing more attention to this work that we've done for a long time and making sure that these, or trying to work with agencies to make sure these investments make good jobs. One strategy that our Good Jobs initiative has been using is to add requirements to the funding opportunities that FOA has put out by agencies to say, okay, maybe you can incentivize the developers who are making sure that they have good requirements to register apprenticeships but also participating in OFCCP's make-up construction program which makes sure that you work on getting new voices into those jobs and also like using community benefits agreements and project labor agreements and local hiring provisions and even neutrality agreements. These provisions, we've got MOUs now with five federal agencies helping them as they're working through their funding opportunities. The impact so far, $181 billion funds have equity and job quality incentives of some sort built into them across 91 funding opportunity announcements. We publicize this, you can see it all on GoodJobs.gov, you can even see FOAs that have these requirements built in and we're hoping that this is a way where we're kind of putting out there in this administration the opportunities for states and localities and others to jump on and say, okay, we can create good local jobs here. Great, that's impressive. I did not have the 91 number. I should say we have a great team working on that so I'm always happy to talk about it. Okay, so this is my last official question, but it's going to all three of you and then we'll open it up for questions from the audience. So, Treasury tied this report on unions to its earlier work on labor market competition and too often these things are viewed completely in isolation and not as related pieces of the broader power dynamics that shape labor market outcomes. So, in closing, I'm hoping each of you can talk a little bit about the importance of understanding this inherent imbalance of power between workers and the bosses and what you hope people take away from this report and today's discussion. Should I go first? Are you looking at me? Anybody? You jump all like whoever wants to. I'm happy to go. This is a sports analogy. Well done. Let's go first. I'll go first. So, the main takeaway so I'll be brief too that the main takeaway that I think I hope people will take away from the report and that I've taken away from the report is that there's not a tradeoff there's not a tradeoff between supporting worker bargaining and supporting a strong and robust economy. And I think that I think that is that's a really important and not obvious statement but there's not a tradeoff we can support both worker bargaining and in doing so support a stronger and more robust economy. So, that's the main takeaway. I'll pass it on. You go. I just want to credit that the earlier Treasury report on keeping the kind of bringing out the connection between worker empowerment unions and competition I think was really important and really showed that the lack of competition in labor markets I think the stat was with 20% lower wages workers find 20% lower wages than they would in a fully competitive market and that the decline in union density has been a key factor in weakening workers bargaining power and less ability to counterbalance firms wage setting power so that report for me at least was very instructive we think about it's funny because we think about competition through different lenses at the Department of Labor so we've been in this administration we're part of the President's competition council working closely with the other agencies thinking about how do you tackle a kind of competition we have our own authorities we don't have a special competition authority but for us, for example in our enforcement work employers using training repayment agreements that on the one hand they limit worker mobility they're affecting workers wages because they say if you leave, you have to repay the training that we gave you we're looking at that when repaying that training might actually pull you below the minimum wage that could be a problem so we filed cases our solicitors office filed cases in the New York region looking at employers who were we would say pulling people below minimum wage by putting in place these training repayment agreements we have members of understanding with the Department of Justice antitrust division with the FTC you know looking for we're creating mechanisms to share information finding ways to work together there and again within our authorities making sure that we're tackling competition that way and we're looking for other policy levers we can again to enforce and administer the laws that we administer but in the process strengthening competition so you know just for one example one easy one we did our the rule making necessary to enforce the criminal antitrust inter retaliation act which is one of the many whistleblower laws that OSHA enforces making sure that folks are filing complaints under that law that they're protected from from retaliation and we have more on the horizon so we're but I feel like that treasure report gave us a lot of a lot of the good half behind this work yeah so thank you for all of that my comment on what the sort of this treasury report means in our under like our new understanding of power really means I like to sort of look back at where the economics field used to be so it 100% used to be not every single person in the economics field but the general belief in the economics field that employers and workers have equal power in the labor market meaning that employers don't have the power to set wages worker wages below below the value of the workers were the value of the workers work to the firm that employers don't have the power to suppress wages and keep any of like the fruits of workers work for themselves that was the general belief in the economics field that is not true and I do think that the field has is leaving has largely left that general understanding behind and I do want to sort of step back and just like since we're in the house of EPI say that I actually do strongly believe that EPI is just absolutely relentless rigorous work on this issue has been an important part of the shift but as a sign of that the shift really has happened we are here in this room talking about not an EPI paper we are talking about a paper coming out of the US Treasury department talking about the benefits of unions that is an enormous like sign of just how different things are I think there is a growing understanding in this this paper really does underscore it in the economics field that there isn't to trade off like you just said that things like labor standards and institutions like labor like the institutions like unions are actually crucial to providing countervailing power to workers that actually makes our economy more balanced and makes it less possible that a small slice of people can capture the fruits of economic growth a small slice of people who already have the most there is a growing understanding in the economics field that the restoration of unions is actually really important to having an economy that works fairly and efficiently and so I just think that this paper when I saw it just blew my mind that this is just as a marker of just how much things have changed that is not to say there isn't still change to happen there is but it is a real marker of how much things have changed and I think that that will have really important repercussions in the policy space going forward given how powerful economists are in helping shape economic policy so I think that this isn't just an unbelievably important development right thank you Heidi let's give a hand to our panel applause applause alright so now we are going to open up to questions from the audience is there anybody that wants to ask a question there in the corner I want to apologize for asking a difficult question I want to apologize for asking a difficult question but it is important who really needs to be addressed so my question is not just understood my dad was a teacher my mom was AFGE and they not been members of the university but in looking at the history of what's happened what's left out of this discussion what I'd like you all to address is globalization and technology which is what underlined drivers in all the trends that you described and for industrial unions the issue is well if they are successful won't that just mean more production is shifted to Vietnam or service unions won't their success just mean that more robots will replace humans in the Amazon warehouse the only union that can't be off-short is government employees but even they can be replaced by robots and I think just at the end of the day everybody in the service industry should assume their jobs will be replaced by artificial intelligence and not forget something to do with their free time because it won't be any job so the issue the real issue is how do you deal with the threat of off-shorting and the threat of artificial intelligence and robotization in dealing with the recommendations during the analysis thank you Laura yeah I can address that or be the first to address it so firstly there's no doubt that first picture that I showed or the second picture but that of rising inequality at the same time that there's declining union membership so just going back in time I don't want to have implied or to imply that the decline of unionization is the only cause of the increase of inequality and certainly globalization and technological change is a big part of the story that contributed to weakening worker power all together that contributed to both increased inequality and decline in union membership going forward these are really difficult questions so regardless of what is going on with unions the AI what is going to happen with AI what is going to happen with other robots connected to AI and other technological change is going to be an issue that we are dealing with for the economy and here I actually think that unions are like there's a real opportunity to work with unions provide a way of working with the workforce in the economy to figure out for to figure out how to incorporate AI in a way that's complimenting work rather than replacing work this is not easy and there's going to have to be good government policy good government policy creative thinking on the part of both employers and employees to figure this out but that is the goal we want the goal and just as an example and I'm not seeing the future I don't know what the future brings but just as an example wouldn't it be great AI complimented work so we could work everyone could work four-day work weeks and or fewer hours have the same output and have the same quality of life or a higher quality of life how could we possibly get there the only way to get there is if there is a conscious decision in workplaces by workers and employers to reduce the work week and I'm not making a policy recommendation right now to be clear but I want to just give an example of how unions can be a voice in shaping how technology is incorporated in our future economy thank you Razor Heidi do you want to say anything on this I feel like I can't not I just love this topic so I want to just say a couple of things on it I'm not scared that AI is going to lead to mass unemployment at all I think if you were a futurist in the early 1800s and 90% of people worked in agriculture you could have been 100% right in saying technology is going to come in and take away almost all of the jobs you would have been right now less than 2% of people work in agriculture but no one really thinks that led to an overall decline so I don't have an existential concern that it's going to lead to mass unemployment but I do think that there is a concern that technology can be used as a cudgel against workers and Josh Bivens who is our chief economist brings up this I think it's the best example so I'm just stealing it from Josh I steal lots of stuff from Josh but I'm including this the way that the example being it's not the technology that is the problem it's the power dynamic that is the problem the black boxes that are in truckers cab they are only ever used to give evidence that workers, that truckers have been violating their hours of service rules they're only ever used against truckers they could 100% be used to make sure that truckers are paid for every second that they are idling through no fault of their own like when they're staying for hours or even days at ports waiting to have their trucks offloaded or unloaded it could be used that way so the technology is not the issue it is actually the power dynamic that means it's used this way and not that way and that's where unions come in when those jobs reunionize you better believe that it wouldn't be able to be used as a cudgel for workers in the way that it is now it could be used or it could be used in a more egalitarian way so I keep coming back to the issue is not the technology it's power and that's where this real emphasis on unionization is so crucial and just briefly I think those are all excellent points historically I think one of the really exciting things about this invest in America agenda and just the administration's embrace of industrial policy in general like chips and IRA is it's boosting US industry in this global race it's not the first country to decide we're going to boost our industry in that competition it also understands that our workers in the industry really need each other they're intertwined to make this all successful so we're going to make sure we have investments in key industries but we really need the workforce and a well-paid well-trained workforce in order to pull those off that's why you see more employers thinking about things like union neutrality we'll make sure we have a good workplace we'll be able to recruit more workers we'll have stability in the workplace to do that it's also when you think about the AI ahead I think this is like pulling off of what Laura is talking about if you have workers at the table who are helping to decide how does AI get implemented you're going to have a more effective implementation of AI as well and thinking about the opportunity we have with some of these investments to have the chance to kind of reform the economy in a way that's actually helpful to both these new industries and the workers in them thank you any other questions here first and then middle yeah I'll try to be quick because I see a few minutes so thank you all this is really very interesting we found ourselves here for a different conference and my friend here found this we're both union we are here for so my name is Theresa Taylor I am first to state employee second union steward and chapter president and third elected labor representative for the califers board of administration so not only do I deal with this as a union person face to face in strikes, in representations etc but we as board members are currently fighting with the investment industry to consider labor and labor principles in their investments okay we just are working on that currently or whatever meeting we made to be able to pass it for our whole portfolio but I think what's important that I'm having a little trouble with this is amazing right coming out of the treasury department I think goes to showing how important the white and heroes administration considers this work right but the minute we get a republican led congress or president I need whole congress not just the not the representatives anyway then we're looking at an ideological opposition to this and it's apparent in the dealings we have with some of our investments right we invest worldwide and it's not unusual for us to run up against these things we've had many calls this summer from labor groups talking about how they're interfering in organizing or interfering in strikes so how do we combat that once this administration is gone what is your thoughts besides labor continuing to push and push and push which we do I'm going to just because we're short of time I'm going to turn that question to the panel but I'm first going to take this question so they can answer both thank you I'm Jeff Wheeler I have a project of global supply chains funded by the department of labor former union president the organizer and attorney and I wonder I look forward to reading your report and seeing how we can connect with some of this core problem which is despite all this good activity the strikes that are successful break policy the needle's not being moved from union density all this great stuff's going on so what do we do how do we take this to the next level kind of coordinated strategy where we'll have to operate in different realms legal policy and organizing to move that needle so that's my question how do we move the needle on union density those are big meaty questions so who would like to take it I'm happy to go or defer Heidi go ahead okay I'll do this quickly what do we do when this administration is over it's a very good question I feel like a lot is you know a lot is up in the air and the next whatever 18 months the I think that one of the things and I sort of talked about this we sort of talked about this but that there has been a real shift that I don't think is going to be put back in any box once there's a new administration as far as people's understanding of what collective action could do for them like I think they're just the broader conversation the union activity and the conversation that's around it there has been actually a lesson learned that collective action is a thing that is available to workers and that that gives me hope that that lesson isn't just going to go away if there's a new administration so I think that's some hope that's a very it's a meaty question that you brought up and then the moving the needle on density that is a really good point the fact that we have had all of this union activity and that we haven't seen a big increase in the share of workers who are in unions really does just come back around to the we do not have labor law in this country that fundamentally supports people's right to organize so like just the if you are you technically cannot fire a worker or not legally allowed to fire a worker for union organizing in this country that is the law but it happens all the time because the consequences to doing it are nothing there are no more than a slap on the wrist like if an employer illegally fires a worker for union organizing what happens to them if the big if they are found guilty of doing that they have to restore they have to reinstate that person's job pay them back pay that they didn't get during that time minus any wages that they got at a different job during that same time like it's just it's not even a slap on the wrist and so it is really I think I'm not saying anything that you don't didn't already imply with your job we need to reform labor law in order to get this to happen so it needs to happen at the executive level legislative federal and that's in state and local houses Laura I mean just to add I don't have much to add with what Heidi said but I am really encouraged about what's going on now and how high the approval ratings are and I would expect that it would take time I mean this isn't it's not instantaneous that we'd expect to see the increase in density so I'm not saying that without more reform at the state level as well that we would you know that will make that much progress but I would expect it to take time so I'm encouraged and would hope that in a few years we'll see some of the fruits of the labor from now I think Dave said it all okay great well thank you so much for joining us today our panelists will hang out for a couple of minutes if you want to chat further and again follow us at Economic Policy or check out our website thank you so much