Undoubtedly the organizing failures are also the result of anti-union labor laws which retard and corrupt the process.
I also don't think the "blue collar" identity idea holds up with SEIU, or other unions organizing service sector employees. Many if not most of their membership are women and people of color.
Greg Boozell gboozell at juno.com
-- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
Nathan:
> Although part of the argument of the Change to Win folks is the best thing
> unions can do in the longterm for Dems is organize more workers. The more
> workers in unions, the more folks will support the Dems.
I am not sure if this is true - blue collar rank and file tends to be socially conservative and patriotic and thus vote Republican. In other words, unions membership does not necessarily mean votes for Democrats - identity politics is IMHO a much bigger factor.
While we are at that, I also think that steadily declining union membership is not merely a result of sluggish organizing efforts (the standard lefty excuse). I think unions face a structural problem, which so far they profoundly failed to address. That problem is growing discord between blue collar identity politics which is still the main part of union appeal and changing nature of workforce, which is becoming more and more "white" or "pink" collar. Unions stuck the old cultural identity - male blue collar breadwinners working in "good" mfg jobs - but that cultural identity has less and less appeal to people (especially the younger crowd) working in most mainstream occupations. Yet, the unions for the most part wrote these folks off as "yuppies" and do next to nothing to attract them en masse. Instead they look for new members for whom their old blue collar cultural identity may still have some appeal.