By Harold Myerson
Celebrate Labor Day.
Since the emergence
of capitalism, workers seeking higher pay and safer workplaces have banded
together in guilds and unions to pressure their employers for a better deal.
That has been the approach of the American labor movement for the past 200
years.
That approach,
however, has begun to change. It’s not because unions think collective bargaining
is a bad idea but because workers can’t form unions any more — not in the
private sector, not at this time. There are some exceptions: Organizing
continues at airlines, for instance, which are governed by different organizing
rules than most industries. But employer opposition to organizing has become
pervasive in the larger economy, and the penalties for employers who violate
workers’ rights as they attempt to unionize are so meager that such violations
have become routine. For this and a multitude of other reasons, the share of
unionized workers in the private sector dropped from roughly one-third in the
mid-20th century to a scant 6.6 percent last year. In consequence, the share of
the nation’s economy constituted by wages has sunk to its lowest level since
World War II, and U.S. median household income continues to decline.
Unions face an
existential problem: If they can’t represent more than a sliver of American
workers on the job, what is their mission? Are there other ways they can
advance workers’ interests even if those workers aren’t their members?
(Editors note; See also post on labor and the immigration struggles on www.antiracismdsa.blogspot.com)
