Portugal fact of the day

In 2008, 1.9 million Portuguese workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Last year, the number was down to 300,000.

The article is by Eduardo Porter and is interesting throughout.  Here is one additional bit:

The drop in unionization in Portugal “is going to blow the wage distribution apart,” David Card, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence that Europe’s tentative new path will lead to deepening inequality comes from the country that adopted the strategy earliest and came out at the other end a paragon of success: Germany.

Average really is over, for Western Europe too.