Note: Parts of this are taken from the new edition of my book, Why Unions Matter, which will be published by Monthly Review Press next month.
Labor unions have been on the ropes in the United States for many years. In 2007, union density (the share of employed workers in unions) was around 12 percent; density has been declining since the mid-1950s, when it was more than 30 percent, and especially since 1980, when it was about 20 percent. There are fewer union members today than there were in 1995. The private sector has so hemorrhaged union members that union density there is now about 7.5 percent, below what it was before the Great Depression. A few unions, most notably the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), have grown, but, in the case of SEIU, there is considerable controversy over the manner in which the union has gained new members, with critics arguing that its often top-down growth has not strengthened the labor movement.
To be successful, unions must not only organize workplaces; they must also have a strong political voice. Organized labor in the United States has never had the formidable political presence workers’ organizations have in other parts of the world. However, there have been times when labor wielded some political clout, such as the period from the mid-1930s to the early 1970s. Over the past thirty-five years, however, labor has been politically voiceless. The AFL-CIO and its member unions have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get sympathetic politicians elected to office, and with some success. Yet this has not translated into legislation that empowers working men and women. Except for a couple of badly needed increases in the minimum wage, quite the opposite has occurred. Whether the President has been Democrat or Republican, labor has gotten the short end of the stick: "free trade" agreements, an end to most federal aid to the poor, worsening health care, more working class people in prison, the refusal to enforce the nation’s labor laws, and endless wars that have drained public coffers of funds that might have been used to enhance the lives of ordinary folks. And as critic of the labor movement Kim Moody points out, there is a direct correspondence between the increase in the amounts of money and effort labor has expended politically and the decline in organizing efforts. That is, during every political season organized labor goes into high gear for the Democrats, pouring money into political coffers and its own more generic pro-Democrat campaigns and devoting tens fo thousands of volunteer hours to phone banking, leafleting, and house visits. But while unions are doing these things, organizing campaigns are put on hold or never begun, so that the one thing that would make politicians heed labor’s desires, namely mass organization of workplaces, does not occur.
This time around, the two union federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win (CTW), pulled out all the stops to help elect Barrack Obama. The AFL-CIO, the CTW, and member unions together poured more than one hundred million dollars into the presidential campaign of Barack Obama and millions more into efforts to get Democratic Senators and Representatives elected. One important reason for this support is that Obama and many Democratic politicians are on record in favor of passage by Congress of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
Full essay at http:blog.cheapmotelsandahotplate.org
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