The United States is suffering from an ever-widening gap between the wealthy and the poor as the once-solid middle and working classes are atrophying.

Unions can help close the gap. This is true across the nation and right in our midst as New Scotland town workers seek to unionize.

As Labor Day approaches, we would be wise to recognize the worth of workers. Trade unionists pushed for the holiday in the 19th Century.

Unions first formed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution when it was easy for business owners to take advantage of the thousands of workers that fled their rural towns and farms for manufacturing jobs in the cities.

Locally, in 1858, at Harmony Mills in Cohoes, 800 of 1,000 workers went on strike for three weeks to fight against a cut in pay. For the first time in our nation, striking workers forced a mill to raise wages — by 12.5 percent.

Labor unions rose in status and membership in the New Deal era fostered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1935, the National Labor Relations Act guaranteed the right of private-sector workers to organize, to take part in collective bargaining, and to strike.

This was meant to level the playing field between workers and their bosses. The law also set up the National Labor Relations Board to oversee the way in which workers decide whether to be represented by a union and to prosecute labor-law violations.

In 1937, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the act. The case was brought by the NLRB against a steel company that had fired workers who tried to organize a union.

“Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents,” wrote Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes for the majority in reversing a lower court decision.

Hughes went on, “Long ago we stated the reason for labor organizations. We said that they were organized out of the necessities of the situation; that a single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer; that he was dependent ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and family; that, if the employer refused to pay him the wages that he thought fair, he was nevertheless unable to leave the employ and resist arbitrary and unfair treatment; that union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on an equality with their employer.”

In recent decades, the United States has seen a shift in this philosophy as the supporters of trickle-down economics have sought the cheapest way to earn a profit, often at the expense of the working class as work was sent overseas where wages are far cheaper.

Unions, too, have lost membership and clout. In 1983, about 20 percent of workers in the United States belonged to a union; last year, about 10 percent did, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The union membership rate of public-sector workers, at 33 percent, continued in 2022 to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers at 6 percent.

Most importantly, the bureau’s data from 2022 shows that nonunion workers had median weekly earnings, of $1,029, which were 85 percent of earnings for workers who were union members, at $1,216. A difference of $187 a week is an annual difference of close to $10,000.

Recently, there has been a resurgence of attempts to form unions — notably among Amazon and Starbucks workers — and union strikes among Hollywood actors and writers have been highly publicized. Just this past week, 86 percent of Teamsters union members voted on a new contract with United Parcel Service, avoiding a strike that could have had a brutal effect on the economy.

Against this backdrop, we reported earlier this month on a July 25 letter signed by three New Scotland highway workers, stating that employees in five town departments were seeking to be represented by the Civil Service Employees Association and asking the town to voluntarily recognize the union.

One of the highway workers who signed the letter, Ben Kawczak, told our reporter Sean Mulkerrin that 90 percent of eligible employees want to unionize.

We were not surprised by the request.

Mulkerrin, in covering the development of the town’s current $9 million budget last November, quoted highway worker Kevin Schenmeyer, who’d been employed by the town for 34 years, asking the board why a “previous years’ relationship as far as” salary step levels “is being thrown out the window this year?”

Schenmeyer said there were other employees in similar situations. “We’d like to know why,” he said.

The concern for the 2023 budget, Supervisor Douglas LaGrange had responded, was an across-the-board 5-percent cost-of-living pay increase for employees, “and then when we get to the next stages, maybe next year or what have you,” the town would place employees with 12 or more years of service into the newly-created seventh step on the payscale. 

Schenmeyer also took the board to task for town employees’ comparatively low pay and said it was the cause of high worker turnover. For a number of years, Schenmeyer said, “There hasn’t really been a lot of serious concern for the guys on the hill, otherwise known as the highway department.”

“I’m very proud of what we’ve done in the past few years with the highway department,” responded LaGrange at last November’s budget session. “And, if for some reason people feel otherwise, you know, there’s not much I can do about it.”

But now, we believe, there is something to be done about it — and the town board is taking steps in the right direction.

At its Aug. 23 meeting, the board agreed to accept the CSEA if there is a majority sign-up. We hope that Kawczak was right and that the great majority of town workers will fill out the authorization forms, or cards, stating they wish to be represented by the union.

We believe it is something the citizens of New Scotland would support. The town taxes are low and most residents recognize the essential work done by town workers — whether it is clearing roads of snow in the winter or keeping residents’ water and wastewater flowing year-round.

New Scotland is a relatively wealthy town where, according to the United States Census Bureau, in rough numbers, the median household income in 2021 dollars was $106,000 compared to $74,000 for all of Albany County, and $69,000 nationwide. The three New Scotland highway workers who signed the letter to unionize make around $42,000 annually.

“We’re hoping they’ll do the right thing and recognize us,” Kawczak told our reporter, but if not, the workers already have a supermajority ready to vote through the union, he said. 

A recent Gallup poll has shown that Americans’ approval of labor unions has crescendoed in 2022 to 71 percent. This is a steady climb from about 50 percent a decade ago, and equal to the approval rate of the 1940s. The poll shows the top reasons members give for joining a union are pay and benefits, workers’ rights, and job security.

We believe town workers in New Scotland deserve all three.

Forming unions now is harder than in the heyday of the New Deal era when the scourge of the Great Depression was front of mind and the labor act was passed. President Joe Biden in 2021 supported a bill that would have helped; it was passed by the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate.

The current support shown nationwide for unions, though, gives us hope that enough workers — like those right here in New Scotland — will prevail so that we can begin to close that gap that has widened between the wealthy and the poor without the strength of the working class to bridge the divide.

As the numbers of workers in unions has plummeted from the 1950s until now, the income share for the top 10-percent of earners has climbed steadily, as if in a mirrored image.

As Chief Justice Hughes wrote in 1937, “That union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on an equality with their employer.”