>From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Nathan Newman wrote:
>>Hey, union density fell by 23% in the Reagan years - but a mere 16%
>>during the Clinton era!
>
>Which considering the massive job increases in the last decade is actually
>relatively impressive. Unions were actually organizing - unlike in much of
>the previous decade - but jobs were growing faster than unions could
>organize them.
>
>I remember at the beginning of the decade, pretty serious pro-labor analysts
>were predicting a complete collapse of the unions in the 1990s. One guy I
>knew, who headed the California state labor commission under Jerry Brown,
>back when it was pretty hard-core pro-union, with sad confidence wrote
>articles predicting a union density of 5% by the year 2000.
That's a bit alarmist. At the Reagan rate of decline, we'd hit 5% in 2029; at the Clinton rate of decline, we'd get a reprieve from the 5% figure until 2047!
That's the difference between the two parties in a nutshell; Dems will kill you more slowly, and we'll thank them for it.
Doug