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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMother Jones: Unions Are Dying. What Will Replace Them?
I can appreciate Drum's musings though I find them really depressing. I don't see the question as one of how to replace unions but how to revitalize them. Thoughts?
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/02/unions-dying-income-inequality
Mother Jones
Unions Are Dying. What Will Replace Them?
By Kevin Drum
Thu Feb. 27, 2014 8:09 AM GMT
(excerpt)
This is where I depart a bit from both Soltas and Wasserin emphasis if not in detail. Their focus is primarily on what unions do specifically in the workplace: balancing power between employers and workers and providing a voice for workers that management can hear. Both of those are important, and both are problematic: You can reasonably argue about whether they're a net positive, or whether unions are the only way of obtaining them. But I view the primary strength of unions differently: They're a broad-based force that represents the interests of the middle class in the American political arena. Here's how I put it a couple of years ago after a quick review of the ways in which the past three decades have been disastrous for American workers:
This didn't all happen thanks to a sinister 30-year plan hatched in a smoke-filled room, and it can't be reined in merely by exposing it to the light. It's a story about power. It's about the loss of a countervailing power robust enough to stand up to the influence of business interests and the rich on equal terms. With that gone, the response to every new crisis and every new change in the economic landscape has inevitably pointed in the same direction. And after three decades, the cumulative effect of all those individual responses is an economy focused almost exclusively on the demands of business and finance. In theory, that's supposed to produce rapid economic growth that serves us all, and 30 years of free-market evangelism have convinced nearly everyoneeven middle-class voters who keep getting the short end of the economic stickthat the policy preferences of the business community are good for everyone. But in practice, the benefits have gone almost entirely to the very wealthy.
The heart and soul of liberalism is economic egalitarianism. Without it, Wall Street will continue to extract ever vaster sums from the American economy, the middle class will continue to stagnate, and the left will continue to lack the powerful political and cultural energy necessary for a sustained period of liberal reform. For this to change, America needs a countervailing power as big, crude, and uncompromising as organized labor used to be.... MORE
reformist2
(9,841 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Romulox
(25,960 posts)Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)Anyone who tells you that working people can best negotiate as individuals is full of shit and, usually, out for themselves at your expense.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)And the check to corporate abuse would be the craftsmen elect not to work for the offender. On the public front, social media and other such venues could be leveraged to draw enough bad press that the offender would correct themselves. I think the later would be a truly democratic solution and it makes the public -- not just the immediate workers -- a part of the process, i.e. the Limbaugh boycotts were participated in by many people who were not listeners of his program.
global1
(25,241 posts)I posted this countless times here on DU to only mild response. I can't figure out why this doesn't generate more discussion - but I'm going to post it again. Here's the link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024427124
A National Workers Association.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)JJChambers
(1,115 posts)PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)It will NOT drive voters right. It does not have to be a violent revolution.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Labor membership is rising.