House of Labor

Nathan Newman has moved from his old Labor Blog to a “House of Labor” over at TPMCafe. While it’s good to see Nathan getting a bigger audience, it’s a little disappointing to me, because I don’t know if I can keep up with the volume over at TPMCafe. Nonetheless, here’s a bit from his inaugural post, which is quite good:

You can talk about a range of issues – whether child care or health care or whatever – and the bottom line is they cost families money. And conservatives have a simple message: they’ll cut your taxes so middle class families can afford more of all of it.

Once upon a time, progressives had an even simpler alternative. Support workers rights to demand higher wages and they’ll have even more money and benefits for everything they need to take care of their families.

Union workers make roughly 40-50% more than non-union workers in private industry, and even when you compare workers within the same industry, the union premium is usually something like 30% more pay.

A 30% pay increase trumps any tax cut the rightwing can promise.