>If I read it correctly, this means that union membership is an intervening
>(if not spurious) variable i.e. political preferences make people more
>likely to be union members, and that also affects their voting behavior. <...>
In my experience, unions act as an educating force for everyone I've ever known who was union, particularly the more "blue collar" type unions. The educating here is, typically, to build in an antipathy to management/bosses and those are constantly associated with the republican party. In turn, the education typically solidifies the idea that the democrats are the party who will act in the interests of workers.
If I went door-to-door in my old neighborhoods, the union households would have a clue about the issues. They weren't, for instance, unlikely to know who Karl Rove is. They read the newspaper. FRom what I observed, shop talk revolved around what was in the news and was especially animated during the election years. I worked for a couple of places where I interacted a lot with union members on their lunch hour, so I heard in conversations. They were, to me, markedly different from the shops where I worked that were non-union, where conversation was hardly ever about politics. I think it's this politicization, this encouragement of association and conversation, the provision of what Harry Boyte and Sara Evans called "free spaces" that nourishes a tendency to side with liberals/democrats.
(Now, folks can say "not a dime's worth of difference!" but this is _not_ how people typically see it.
When I was growing up, it was typical to be encouraged to do one of three things:
1. get a union job 2. get a job with the government 3. go into the military
what do these have in common? the perception that these jobs were stable, long term, came with benefits. These people made a decision about what was important to them: stability, steadily making money, not necessarily interested in status or occupational prestige, willing to trade those things for long-term employment. Not gamblers, not people who want to get rich quick, etc.
Growing up in a neighborhood where most people were manual laborers or, like my dad, employed in a very menial "management" position (head paper boy for a small town newspaper isn't exactly 'management' as Carrol points out) or quasi-professional positions, I'd say that people didn't necessarily say, "I want to be a union member!" Rather, they said to themselves, "I want security." Now, maybe that is particular to my hometown, which had been going through plant shutdowns since the 50s. This was a place where job security was _really_ important to people.
As for the status issue, I was just talking with people about "first memories". My dad used to deliver home heating oil when I was little. One of my first, is the pained look on my dad's face when, at 3, I wouldn't let me hug me after work because his hands were dirty. Mom told me it really bothered him. By the time I was five, mom had encouraged him to apply for work at the local newspaper where he could wear a shirt and tie. So, most of his time was spent in the "dirty" side of the paper, where the paper got printed. So, he used to have to deliver the routes the paperboys skipped about twice a week. HE got to wear a shirt and tie.
So, he was barely paid more than a home heating oild delivery driver. He got to wear that tie. My mom thought it would be "entry-level" and it would be an opportunity for dad to 'move up'. It wasn't, it was a deadend job, my mother just wasn't savvy enough to figure that out.
He never did. The guy who ran the office hated dad coz he'd been in the military and he went and did a boneheaded thing: he hired lesbians to work as inserters. Shame on my dad. Made did's life miserable, but dad never went back to driving truck. Dad never tried for work in the factories in town. Etc.
For some people, maybe for most (I'm not going to deny it about myself), there is enough shame in manual labor that most people try to avoid doing it, even if it means more money, fewer hours, perhaps even more stability. And, I would say that, similarly, there is enough shame in menial service labor, that most people want to avoid it as a 'career' choice. This wasn't always true. Back in the day, my great uncle worked as a clerk in a small hardware store. This was a respectable position or at least I interpreted it that way. It was like a kind of 'career' -- namely because anyone I can remember who had those kinds of jobs had been there for years, fixtures, members of the "small business family", and sometimes even people who, while they didn't own the store, were so associated with it, it was hard to imagine it mattered.
It wouldn't be the drugstore without Hank. It wouldn't be the hardware store without Uncle Jim. It wouldn't be the ladies boutique without Trudy.
And the reason why there was more status in those kinds of jobs was because, I think, their jobs weren't so routinized and deskilled that they were still considered bearers of important knowledge that was valuable to the store and its owners. It was obviously illusory, but it mattered to people that their employers might treat them as more than fungible cogs in the machine.
"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
-- rwmartin