> Looking at the objective conditions in which
> union organizing occurs is a very good idea, indeed.
> To the ones that you mention, I would also add
> generalized social norms, values and expectations that
> aid or impede collective action. Unions tend to
> thrive in societies that put more value on collective
> action and social solidarity - but the US is not one
> of them.
>
> It seems that the US society has thoroughly adopted
> the value system of its ruling class e.g.
> individulalism, competition, free market, opportunity
> to pursue wealth, business as the highest form of
> social institution and consumerism. This social
> value system is not very conducive toward labor
> unionis.
>
> I would go even further and conjecture that in the
> past, US unions got a free ride from social solidarity
> expectations brought from overseas by immigrants...
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I think there is some truth to this, but it can be exaggerated.
While immigrants were instrumental in introducing socialist ideology into the US workers' movement, there were, as you know, periods in American history when unions did thrive and collective action and social solidarity were very much in evidence - in particular, at the end of the 19th century through WW I and the Depression through WW II. The first wave of unionizatiion occured primarily in the booming resource and transportation sectors; the second in the mass production manufacturing industries. And while immigrants - especially from the British Isles and Eastern Europe - played a prominent role in each of these periods, the vast majority of workers who fought to build unions were native-born Americans, often from the Midwest and the South, as were their leaders like Powderly, Parsons, Debs, Haywood, Lewis, the Reuthers, etc.
Economic necessity in these periods shattered the inherited values. The culture of individualism which contributed to "American exceptionalism" - and still does - has material roots in the great expansion of the American econony and long unbroken history of social mobility and rising living standards which were unparalleled in Europe and have been coming to an end in America. But the general economic progress was always accompanied by festering mass resentment at the growing inequality and poor working conditions which exhibited itself in the open revolts described above, and in different form, in the 60s.
A similar phenomenon seems to be attending the great economic expansion going on in China today. It's generated a rapidly-growing urban-based middle class and a culture of individualism together with an increasingly restive working class frustrated by growing inequality and primitive working conditions which is part of the same process.