Unionization-and-Inequality

Following concern expressed by the IMF, the Conference Board and of course thousands of protesters around the world, the OECD has just released an extensive 400-page report on the problem of growing inequality: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps on Rising.

I haven’t read through it yet, and it also has quite a lot of other information for downloading and for interaction online, but here are some of the conclusions for Canada:

– inequality in Canada is above the OECD average, but still below levels in the U.S.

– the rise in inequality is largely due to increased disparities in labour earnings, but also due to less redistribution

– taxes and benefits play a smaller role in reducing inequality in Canada than in most OECD countries: prior to the mid-1990s, they offset more than 70 per cent of the rise in market income inequality, now it’s less than 40 per cent

– the richest 1 per cent saw their share of income rise from 8.1 per cent in 1980 to 13.3 per cent in 2007

It calls for a focus on:

– more and better jobs

– investing in human capital, starting at early childhood level and with more life-long learning

– reforming tax and benefit systems with an increase in the share paid by wealthier individuals

– providing free and high quality public services
The main report also notes that declining coverage of unions and collective bargaining, as well as more precarious work has also contributed to rising earnings inequality.

There are lots of graphs in the report and online.

Here’s one I created last week for another article I’ve written.

Unionization and Inequality in Canada

This article was first posted on The Progressive Economics Forum.

Toby Sanger

Toby Sanger

Toby Sanger is the economist for the Canadian Union of Public Employees. He focuses on labour, inequality, public services, public finances, fair taxes, environment and other issues of concern for CUPE...