Labor Union Blog

By almost all measures, economic inequality is growing. But strengthening workers’ ability to join unions can play a key role in shrinking the gap and rebuilding the nation’s middle class, experts told a House panel today.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, opened the hearing on “The Growing Income Gap in America,” saying “inequality between the top income earners and those in the middle class has been growing rapidly in the last three decades.” Woolsey and several of the experts pointed out that income inequality in the United States is at the highest level since 1928 and the beginning of the Great Depression.