Labor Day and the Decline of Organized Labor
Labor Day and The
Decline of Organized Labor
Junious Ricardo
Stanton
“In the 2015–16 election cycle, business outspent unions 16-to-1 –$3.4bn to $213m – according to
the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Each year all of the
nation’s unions spend about $48m on lobbying in Washington, while corporate America spends more than $2.5bn – more than 50 times as much. This has made many in
Congress far more attentive to corporations than to workers, thus the rush to
cut corporate taxes, but the failure to increase the minimum wage.” American unions have been decimated.
No wonder inequality is booming. Steven Grenhouse https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/15/valuing-corporations-over-workers-has-led-to-americas-income-inequality-problem
It
never ceases to amaze me how people in the United States fail to see what is
going on around them, how they fall for the proverbial okey-doke time and time
again. The first Monday in September is a national holiday called Labor Day; it was created in 1894 to
celebrate the hard fought advances organized labor has made on behalf of
American workers and to encourage unions in their struggle for fair wages and
improved working conditions. Today Labor
Day is a mockery of why it was originally created and an insult to working
people.
But
no one seems to care or grasp the implications of the fact US union membership
is in steep decline. “In 2018, just 10.5% of American workers
were members of unions, according to recently released data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the lowest rate of membership
since the bureau began collecting statistics in the early 1980s. Most analyses
of pre-1980s union membership suggest it was close to 30% in the 1940s and
1950s. The drop has been particularly steep in the private sector. Just 6.4% of
workers in the private sector are unionized, compared with 16.8% in
1983. On the other hand, government employee unions, like those for
teachers and postal workers, have remained fairly strong, with a small decline
from about 37% of the workforce in 1983 to 34% in 2018.” https://qz.com/1542019/union-membership-in-the-us-keeps-on-falling-like-almost-everywhere-else/
American unions are declining in membership, influence and
effectiveness. Some politicians still attend parades; give speeches and ramp up
their campaigns around this time of year, but for all intents and purposes
organized labor is comatose. This is not just because of the shift of economic
activity away from industry and manufacturing to a more service oriented
economy, hospitality and tourism, restaurants, healthcare etc. Today the US
When Ronald Reagan decertified the Air Traffic Controllers
Union and the national AFL-CIO leadership stood passively by and allowed him to
do it, that sounded the death knell for union power and prestige. Unions were
not seen as the heavyweights they once were and from then on both political
parties all over the nation started to look elsewhere for campaign financing
(aka bribes).
State legislatures around the country rushed to pass “right
to work” laws that have effectively curtailed union membership and organizing.
Right to work laws do not forbid unions, they provide a way for non-union
employees to work and not have to pay union dues while still being covered by
the collective bargaining agreement between the unions and management and
ownership. https://www.thebalancecareers.com/right-to-work-2071691
Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?
But Americans still mindlessly celebrate Labor Day even as
the 1% oligarchs and their bought and paid for politicians dismantle and
undermine unions both in the public and private sectors. In recent years
busting public worker unions has been a key plank in the Republican agenda. https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/trump-labor-dept-lets-union-busters-loose-again/
The Koch brothers have greatly
influenced the Republican Party with their money and political organizations
and one of their tenants is union busting. https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/migration/public-citizen-koch.pdf
But the Democrats under Bill Clinton and Al Gore moved the party farther to the
right, courted big corporations and pretty much abandoned, except in rhetoric
only, their support of organized labor. https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democratic-party-abandoning-unions-working-class-whites/
So while both major political parties increasingly depend
on corporations to fill their campaign coffers and they respond to the lobbying
with favorable anti-union legislation, organized labor has literally been
kicked to the curb. Clinton began this policy
when he was governor of Arkansas Clinton
Both political parties have ganged up against unions, both
have effectively undermined organized labor and organized labor is in rapid
decline; but Americans still celebrate Labor Day.
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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 5:53 AM
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