US unions' continued decline masks new forms of worker activism

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/unions-decline-worker-activism


A procession in memory of the 146 victims of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, New York, 1911: a century ago, it took tragedies like the Triangle fire to establish union rights in US workplaces. Photograph: George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress

America's long and steady march toward a fully disposable workforce continues apace, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week. Union membership is at its lowest point in nearly a century, with just 11.3% of all workers – the same level it was in 1916. To put this in proper historical perspective, union members are as rare today as they were at a time when being one could get you shot to death in a mining camp by the Colorado national guard.

Not that there is a great public outcry to return to the halcyon days of garment factory fires and tubercular slaughterhouses, or workers rallying to demand their bosses take away their pensions and bathroom breaks. Surveys show that most people wish they had more, not less input into their working conditions, and that a majority of non-union workers would choose to join a union, given the opportunity. Most do not get that opportunity, whether due to outright intimidation, or the ongoing shift of large parts of the economy toward part-time, temporary, low-wage and no-benefit jobs.

Union decline is nothing new: it began in the US in the mid 1950s and has been accelerating since the mid 70s. What's new this year is why: while deunionization was long linked to deindustrialization, now union losses are concentrated in government, the last bastion of organized labor. Decades ago, facing factory closings, many unions shifted to the public sector, organizing what were then seen as stable jobs: teachers, firefighters, cops, state-funded healthcare and childcare workers.

Then came the recession, and a new breed of Republican governors who seized the moment as a chance to punish their political opponents. One of the sharpest declines has occurred in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker stripped most state employees of their bargaining rights (notably excluding those unions that had endorsed him).

[lunatica]

1. The results of the decline of unions is what will bring unions back

Because the reason unions were started is already and will be happening again. It isn't because unions aren't doing their job. It's because unions ARE doing their job very well that the Republicans want to destroy them.

[Selatius]

2. It's sad to say, but sometimes people don't fight back until there's nothing left to lose.

Sometimes, the real war doesn't start until after the fall. Ideally, people stand up before things get that bad, but all too often, they don't until there's nothing left.