Janus and fair share fees: The organizations financing the attack on unions’ ability to represent workers:
"Many of the organizations financing the legal challenges to workers’ rights have also been funding legislative battles focused on limiting workers’ rights. How do these groups benefit by limiting workers’ rights? Anti-worker policies shift a greater share of economic gains to corporate players and away from ordinary workers. This is evident in the relationship between declining union membership and rising inequality. As union membership has fallen over the last few decades, the share of income going to the top 10 percent has steadily increased. When union membership was at its peak (33.4 percent in 1945) the share of income going to the top 10 percent was only 32.6 percent. In 2015, union membership was 11.1 percent, while the share of income going to the top 10 percent was 47.8 percent—the largest share going to the top 10 percent since 1917 (the earliest year data are available). The erosion of collective bargaining is a core part of our nation’s problems of wage stagnation and rising inequality. Workers who are not in a union have much less power to negotiate with their employers for higher pay (or more hours, or better working conditions). Further, the erosion of union coverage hurts workers who aren’t in a union; research shows that when the share of workers who are union members falls, wages of nonunion workers are lower. For example, wages of nonunion male workers in 2013 would have been 5 percent higher (that’s an additional $2,704 in earnings for year-round workers) had union density remained at its 1979 levels. The decline in union membership rates does not reflect a declining desire to organize in the workplace and collectively bargain. In fact, surveys show that nearly half of nonunion, nonmanagerial workers would vote for union representation if they could. Furthermore, a majority of Americans support the right of workers to join a union."
