Tamara Draut is Director of the Economic Opportunity Program at a think tank/advocacy group called “ Demos .” In her 2006 book, Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead , she explains that she began to focus on the plight of young Americans when, at 30 years of age, she and her husband owed $57,000 in student loan loans and had $19,000 in credit card debt and were reduced to selling some of their music CD’s to make ends meet. She decided that because half of Congress attended college on the G.I. Bill, it could not understand the hardships endured by someone who chose to forego military service and borrow money to get a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Columbia University. She now advocates for higher taxes to pay for college grants, strict regulations on credit card lenders, and, of course, the Employee Free Choice Act.

In a recent article entitled, "The Under 34, Underpaid Underdogs"  posted on the AFL-CIO’s website (also cross-posted HERE), Ms. Draut fails to mention her share of the $57,000 in student loans and instead appears give to credit the financing of her impressive academic credentials to organized labor:

I grew up in a union household. Thanks to union wages, I became the first in my family to graduate from college. That was back in 1993. Today, the steel workers at the factory where my father worked have been locked out for nearly a year, and college tuition at the state university I attended has more than doubled. The decline of high-paying manufacturing jobs, the decline of strong unions and the rising costs of a college education have conspired to make it exceedingly more difficult for a new generation of young people to either work or educate their way into the middle class.

The article continues in the same vein – carelessly bemoaning the supposed lack of economic opportunities available to young adults -- before concluding:

The story of declining economic mobility and security confronting young workers is certainly related to decimated state of unions in the labor market today.

Ms. Draut fails to make a compelling case for this statement. She merely assumes that a union would automatically mean more pay and better benefits and decides that the Employee Free Choice Act would solve a host of problems for young people.

Ms. Draut, of course, is not an economist. She is a social policy advocate, and she can be excused for playing fast and loose with numbers in an effort to promote her agenda. But real economists take issue with Ms. Draut’s assumptions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has long cautioned against assuming that unions result in higher wages, stating in 1990:

There are, of course, a number of factors that influence pay levels besides the presence or absence of a labor-management agreement. The Bureau’s occupational wage surveys typically report higher pay rates for workers employed in larger establishments than for those in smaller plants; for those working in metropolitan areas than for those in rural settings; and so on. Often, these factors are also associated with varying levels of unionization, making it difficult to isolate the effect of each factor.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, earned a Master of Philosophy in economics at Oxford University. She is a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. Ms. Furchtogott-Roth notes that incomes have risen as union membership has declined over the last 20years.

In 2005, 35% of families made over $75,000. But in 1983, only 22% did, after adjusting for inflation. Real median family income was $56,194 in 2005, 22% higher than in 1983 after inflation.

Ms. Draut’s young adult readers may want to consider Ms. Furchtogott-Roth’s final point:

Fewer workers belong to unions because many unions price their workers out of jobs, sending jobs overseas or to more efficient nonunionized firms. The profitable Pillowtex textile mill in Kannapolis, N.C., was unionized in 2000, after a 25-year fight described as a victory for workers. But it closed in 2003, laying off 4,800 employees, and Kannapolis is still recovering from the plant's loss.
Similarly, unionized Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler are firing workers, whereas their nonunion counterparts, Toyota and Honda, with plants in Kentucky and Georgia, can't keep up with demand.

Although nonunion firms also move overseas, they have more flexibility to adapt to changing conditions than do unionized firms. States with laws protecting workers from being compelled to join unions as a condition of employment saw increases in nonagricultural employment of 70% between 1980 and 2005, double the 35% increase in states with no such worker protection.

In a competitive global economy, schemes to get employers to pay artificially high wages, whether through union contracts or higher minimum wages, eventually result in more unemployment and lower economic growth. The Employee Free Choice Act might give workers a freer "choice" of more unemployment, but it won't succeed in raising American standards of living.