Lately, people have begun talking about "wage stagnation." You know what that is even if you don't know the term. "Wage stagnation" happens when, even if you do get raises, you can't get ahead. You may even be falling behind: your food budget doesn't stretch, that car repair costs more, cable bills haven't gone down ever, etc.
There are many reasons behind wage stagnation, with attacks on Unions and bad politics being two of the biggest.
Wage stagnation has been going on for most of the last 40 years or so and most
recent data shows it to be continuing. The middle class has been shrinking despite that fact that workers are more productive and, in many cases, working more hours than any time since the last Gilded Age. Even before the 2008 crash, all the gains in productivity that workers (Union and not) have made didn't result in more money in our paychecks. How much easier would it be to make ends meet if your paycheck was bigger by nearly $20,000 a year? If wages had kept pace with productivity as they had before the "Reagan Revolution" in the 80s, that $20k would have been
our share according to the Economic Policy Institute. For your friends or even your kids working minimum wage jobs, if that wage had kept pace with productivity, then the
"Fight for $15" wouldn't be needed, because the minimum wage would be over $18.
The attacks on Unions here in Wisconsin are part of the bad policy decisions that have been driving wage stagnation since the 1980s. Don't be fooled by glib slogans: this isn't about "market forces" pushing wages down. It's no surprise that when many people are out of work
wages are kept low, but for the technology workers in our Union, the H1-B visa issue has been another big factor in keeping wages down. In a nutshell, the H1-B visa is a particular type of passport that allows people from other countries to work in America for up to six years. They are not allowed to move here permanently under this type of visa. They move here for a few years,
often earning less than the prevailing wage (the companies they contract for may be paid much more, however) and then they go back home. The H1-B visa holders may be good workers and even great people but the political argument over the last few years seems to always be about "how many" when it should be "
Why?"
According to PBS, researchers at EPI state:
When Bill Clinton was president, wages for American IT workers were climbing and American students were clamoring to become computer scientists. Fifteen years later, average real IT wages are no higher. It is no coincidence that high-tech industries are now using guest workers to fill two-thirds of new IT jobs.
I find it odd that those who swear by the "hand of the free market" insist that wages in the tech sector are stagnant
despite having too few workers to do the jobs needed.
This goes against everything we know about economics and wages. If the US wants to be a leader in the
STEM fields, then setting up a situation in which STEM field wages are depressed seems to be the worst approach possible.
Markets are supposed to reflect demand through the price mechanism. In the case of labor, the "price" is wages. How can it be, then, that if the IT industry is experiencing labor shortages, wage levels in this highly profitable industry are no higher than they were in the last millennium? How can an industry expect to attract the best workers without raising wages?
*This is just one example of the kinds of policy decisions that hit us all in our wallets. I remember that a few years ago, CUNA Mutual's then-CIO spoke about how hard it was to get skilled tech workers. In
Madison. With the State government, the UW, AmFam, and Epic already employing thousands of IT workers. When he said something like: "We just can't find the people we need" I couldn't help but finish his sentence in my head:
at the low wages we want to pay them.
Keeping people desperate by policies that don't focus on getting Americans back to work serves to drive wages down. We have a Union that pushes back against that tendency, but the political decisions are a huge force to push against. It will take all of us to make a difference.
However, in our second article, we see that wages have stayed flat or even gone down during the last thirty years. Despite massive productivity gains since the '80s, real wages -- the spending power of the money you take home -- have stayed mostly flat. I take a look at why that might be.
It's been really rough lately for Unions. Sure, there haven't been many highlights during most of the last 30 or 40 years but in Wisconsin, the last seven years have been particularly rough. The recession of 2008 decimated Unions through the simple process of 
