The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

Only a fraction of these effects comes from the direct impact of collective bargaining on the incomes of union members.89 Studies have found that unionization had an equalizing impact even on the nonunionized labor force,90 on broader norms of equity,91 and on CEO pay during the Great Convergence.92 During the Great Convergence unions also provided powerful support for political forces that were working for greater income equality. For all these reasons, several independent studies suggest that roughly one quarter of the post-1970s decline in income equality could be explained by the fall in unionization.93 Unions are another important example, like the high school movement, of a “we” social innovation from the early 1900s whose development over the ensuing six decades contributed to the Great Convergence and whose decline after mid-century contributed to the ensuing Great Divergence.