ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes his personal story with What Do Unions Do? (WDUD) the realities that him face every day in representing American workers through research and strategy. WDUD was the most important economic assessment of the role of American labor unions in over 20 years, and has remained a touchstone for academic work for the past 20 years. Unions provide workers a voice, and that translates into improved productivity, lower quit rates, and other economically beneficial attributes. The monopoly wage effect, from a union perspective in 2005, is but a dream of times past. Union density in the private sector has fallen below 8 percent and with it the “union wage effect” has likewise shrunk. In the labor market, the union wage and benefit effect has now become the Wal-Mart wage and benefit effect in a spiral downward for workers and their families.
