Do Unions Advocate for the Greater Good?

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The other day I linked to a post suggesting that states with higher union densities also had more progressive taxation. Via Ezra Klein, I see that University of Washington grad student Barry Pump took a look at the evidence and concluded this wasn’t true. There’s apparently no correlation at all. But how about social spending? That’s a different story. It turns out there’s a very strong correlation between union density and state spending on social programs, as the chart on the right shows. Pump comments:

While unions may be rather powerless to affect taxation, they may be able to influence where the tax revenues go. Unions generally support social welfare spending and a strong safety net, so greater union membership would result in more social welfare spending….It seems, based on the data above, that unions probably spend more time trying to influence where the taxes states do get ultimately go rather than from whom states receive that tax revenue.

Now, there’s no telling if there’s really any causation here. It could be that states with progressive politics simply tend to produce both strong union movements and higher social spending. But this is something that would be worth a followup. One of the arguments in favor of organized labor is that they advocate for broad social change even on issues that don’t directly affect union members. (For example, national healthcare and high minimum wages. These don’t really affect union members much since they’ve already negotiated health coverage and wages far higher than the minimum, but unions have consistently fought for them anyway.) This behavior is actually a little mysterious, since interest groups usually stick to fairly narrow parochial concerns, but there’s a pretty broad consensus that unions have always acted this way, both in the U.S. and Europe. If Pump’s correlation holds up, it’s another piece of evidence that unions really do tend to produce more egalitarian social policies in general, not just policies that favor union members.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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