(1) Paul Volker was appointed by Carter, not Reagan. The same monetary policy would have been pursued even if Carter had beaten Reagan.
(2) If the Reagan-Bush years are the era of neoliberal medicine, the Clinton years are the era of neoliberal recovery (which has come to an end now) -- the era of recovery in which AFL-CIO failed to reverse the decline in union density. That union density declined more slowly during the Clinton years than in the late 70s and the early 80s simply means that there was an economic boom in the 1990s, the boom that Clinton and the DP did not create.
(3) Looking at the chart at <http://www.aflcio.org/uniondifference/uniondiff11.htm> closely, you can see that the decline in the 2-year period between 1978 and 1980 is much larger than any 2-year period between 1980 and 1992. The crucial change came in *the late 70s*, not in the early 1980s, as far as union density is concerned.
Let's look at a different table (see below). Between 1970 and 1980, union density in the United States declined by 5.7%, and between 1980 and 1989, 5.4%. That's a very steady decline.
***** Where Have All the Members Gone?: Union Density in the Era of Globalization Peter Lange plange at acpub.duke.edu Lyle Scruggs lscruggs at acpub.duke.edu Dept. of Political Science Box 90204 Duke University Durham, NC 27708
...Section 2: Trends in union density and the "era" of globalization
Union density -- the proportion of active (non-retired) wage and salary earners who are union members -- has been a traditional and widely used measure of union strength. The ability of trade unions to gain and hold members has been associated with workers' collective strength in bargaining over wages and benefits and with the ability of unions to mobilize workers for industrial action, voting activity, and sometimes, political protest.
Table 1 summarizes the levels and trends of union density in sixteen advanced OECD countries between 1960 and 1989, the last year for which we have comparable data. Figure 1 plots density levels over this period by country. Of the sixteen countries examined in this paper, ten suffered declines in average union density since the 1970s, the beginning of the period of globalization. All but two countries had lower union density in 1989 than in 1980. However, in six of these ten countries, Austria, Switzerland, France, Japan, the Netherlands and the USA, density rates began their decline well before the mid-1970s, and thus well before the "age" of globalization began. In all six of these countries, density peaked in the early 1960s (or even earlier). Thus, if we consider only countries that were not already experiencing a secular decline in density well before the early 1970's, more countries (6) gained, or maintained, union density after 1974 than lost (4).
Table 1:Union Density Trends 1960-1989
Peak Country 1960 1970 1980 1989 level year Australia 47.9 43.4 46.4 42.7 46.4 1980 Austria 57.4 54.9 50.4 45.5 57.4 1960 Belgium 39.8 41.3 55.8 54.8 55.9 1981 Canada 27.6 29.1 33.2 32.7 33.6 1981 Denmark 60.1 60.2 76.3 74.4 78.2 1986 Finland 32.7 51.9 70.3 71.9 71.9 1989 France 19.6 21.5 17.6 10.2 21.8 1969 Germany 35 33 34.3 30.8 36.1 1978 Italy 26.9 33.4 44.1 33.5 45.3 1976 Japan 31.3 34.5 30.3 25.4 34.8 1964 Netherlands 39.4 36.5 31.5 22.8 39.4 1960 Norway 52.3 50.4 55.7 53.8 55.7 1980 Sweden 63.1 66.2 78 82.9 84.6 1987 Switzerland 37 28.9 31.1 26.5 33.4 1960* UK 40.7 44.6 48.6 37.7 50.1 1979 USA 29.4 25.9 20.2 14.8 29.4 1960 * Switzerland's gains in 1970's is caused by expulsion of "guest workers".
<http://depts.washington.edu/pcls/workingpapers/Scruggs&Lang.pdf> *****
(4) Union victory rates in the NLRB elections:
***** Union organizing efforts have also ebbed. During the 1980s,...the union victory rate in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections stayed constant at slightly under 50 percent. Yet, the number of elections sought by unions fell from around 6858 in 1980 to 3561 in 1982 and has remained at roughly the 1982 level for the remainder of the decade. From 1982 to 1987, the average annual gain of employees in new units was less than half of the average for 1975 to 1981. Unions are simply not organizing the unorganized to the same extent as before, and hence are not replacing union members lost through structural shifts in the economy or other causes.
<http://www.prospect.org/print/V4/14/estreicher-s.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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