Unions matter : How the ability of labour unions to reduce income inequality and influence public policy has been affected by regressive labour laws

The growing concerns of the general public around inequality have given rise to the occupy movement – the international protest move- ment against large corporations and the global financial system – for their role in significantly contributing to the growing social and economic inequal- ities that exist in most industrialized countries around the world. [...] The more • excluding certain groups from the benefits equally wealth is of an expanding economy; distributed the better • diminishing the purchasing power of the the health of that middle and lower income stratums that sus- society. [...] In other words, the known effects of unions on wages are exactly what we see in the Great Compression [between the 1940s and the 1970s]: a rise in the wages of blue-collar workers compared to managers and professionals, and a narrowing of wage differentials among blue-collar workers themselves. [...] Labour law, unionization and the new labour tal income by 1.2 percent.17 market institutions that emerged in this period made an integral contribu- tion to the dramatic dampening of the wide income and wealth inequalities Chart 3 that had plagued canada, the United states and the rest of the industrialized world before 1940. [...] The number of restrictive laws enacted in the past three decades is higher an important factor within that environment over the past three decades than any other period in the history of labour relations in canada.40 The has been the diminishing degree of respect and promotion that governments federal government has passed 19 pieces of back-to-work legislation, while have given to labour rights.