> Intense turnover, residential dispersion, sophisticated
> management, and pre-employment psychological testing.
Turnover was pretty high in pre-CIO manufacturing, too. Management sophistication and psychological testing are indeed high-level anti-union techniques, but I doubt that they're impossible to overcome.
The residential dispersion thing, though, is a tricky one. Workers in the "old days" were organized in myriad ways, both inside and outside the factory. In their real lives, people do not make the distinctions between workplace and outside-the-workplace issues and concerns that many of us in our post-collective-bargaining age may make. Those outside-the-workplace bonds were essential to union organizing during the biggest upsurges of the labor movement. Many of those bonds simply don't exist anymore -- or at least they exist in very different forms that we haven't yet figured out how to use. But note that this "residential dispersion" factor applies to all workers now -- factory workers as well as Wal-Mart workers.
- - - - - - - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories