Young Workers Need the Employee Free Choice Act

We all know that young workers are in bad shape, but in case you need a refresher:

According to a 2008 report, "The Economic State of Young America," published by Demos, a non-profit research organization:

• Median annual earnings for young men (25–34) with a high school education declined by 29 percent between 1975 and 2005, and decreased by 10 percent for young women who are high school graduates. The drop of earnings was even steeper for young African American and Latino workers with only a high school education.
• Median earnings for young men with a bachelor's degree decreased 2 percent between 1975 and 2005, while the earnings for college-educated women increased slightly by 10 percent.
• One in three young workers between the ages of 18 and 34 do not have health insurance—the highest rate by far for all age groups.

Moreover, economic mobility for young workers is constrained by the rising costs of higher education. Tuition at public universities has doubled since 1980 after adjusting for inflation. In 2006, more than half of all students graduating from four-year colleges owed an average of $20,000 in student loan debt.

Over at the AFL-CIO blog, Martin Bennet makes the case for EFCA (union card-check) as the first step to solving those problems. The whole thing is worth a read, but the main thrust of the piece is that -

Wage stagnation and diminishing benefits for young workers over the past three decades is due to erosion of the inflation-adjusted minimum wage; globalization and the export of good manufacturing jobs abroad; the "dot-com" tech bust of the late 1990s and the proliferation of low-wage service sector jobs; the increase of part-time and contingent employment; and, most importantly, the decline of union membership.

- and EFCA, which could drastically increase the size and power of unions, particularly in a service industry in which many workers are young, is the cure.

Also of interest is that the piece notes that the AFL-CIO is going to release data from a survey of young workers before Labor Day. That's an area with very little research and it will likely be a very interesting and important read.