The Union Drive Among Fast Food Workers in NYC

Eduardo Porter had a nice piece in the New York Times two days ago entitled “Unionizing the Bottom of the Pay Scale.” His article dovetails with my recent post here on how mainstream economics has little to say about the the problem of growing structural demand for low-skill service workers.

In Porter’s words:

“To improve the lives of American workers, most economists argue, we might do better by focusing on education to equip them with the skills to perform more productive, better-paid jobs.

But this argument overlooks the fact that the McJob is hardly a niche of the labor market reserved for the uneducated few. Rather, it might be the biggest job of our future.”

He goes on to note that “In countries where more than half of workers belong to a union, only 12 percent of jobs pay” low-wages.

For readers who have not been following this union drive, Steven Greenhouse also had a story on it last week, in which he quoted eminent labor sociologist Ruth Milkman on the problem of organizing such a transient workforce.