>Nathan Newman wrote:
>>
>>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!
>
>Doug, you are obsessed with numerical trends and sometimes disregard
>qualitative trends.
Sometimes, maybe, but not always. But in this case, the numerical trends are hard to argue with. You can make all the claims you like about how much friendlier a labor environment Clinton provided, but union density still declined significantly, despite one of the tightest labor markets in U.S. history. The point isn't that Republicans are better - it's that the problems of U.S. labor are much larger than who's in the White House.
Doug