The New York Times had a good piece last week tying union membership to children’s economic advancement:

“It is well established that unions provide benefits to workers — that they raise wages for their members (and even for nonmembers). They can help reduce inequality.

“A new study suggests that unions may also help children move up the economic ladder.

“Researchers at Harvard, Wellesley and the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, released a paperWednesday showing that children born to low-income families typically ascend to higher incomes in metropolitan areas where union membership is higher…”

Read more.

If you need more convincing about the importance of unions from the Economic Policy Institute…

“This week’s Economic Snapshot explains how the shift in national income from labor compensation to corporate profits and other capital incomes since 2000 has had serious consequences for American wages. It finds that since 2000, the share of income generated by corporations going to workers’ wages declined by 6.8 percentage points, from 82.3 percent to 75.5 percent. Had the share remained the same over this time, labor compensation today would be high enough to give each U.S. worker a $3,770 raise…”

Read more.