Doug has often mentioned the surliness of American labor in the 1970s - and maybe in retrospect, save for a few inspiring moments since then (viz. the UPS strike in 1996, the work stoppages in solidarity with WTO Seattle '99, and Bush 43 invoking Taft-Hartley [the 'slave labor' law] to force longshoremen back atfter a highly publicized & combative lockout in 2002 [see <http://bit.ly/bymgHT>] - it seems uncontroversial that the 1970s was also US labor's last major, collective gasp.
The 70s seem to be when the conservative movement as we know it today really cranked it up when it when it came to churning out its modern pernicious network of foundations, think tanks, activist groups, sent around their intelligence briefing-like memos, formed common alliances of bosses who agreed to dump money into anti-labor candidates across the spectrum, etc., etc. You know, the famous Powell Memo, the Heritage Foundation, Coors, etc. In other words, bosses organized themselves into "unions" in the 1970s on a scale previously unseen (not that there weren't precedents viz. the Liberty League; I'm talking scale of organization, not just the presence of it). They seemed genuinely shocked by the cultural shift in the late 1960s - seriously afraid of what sort of bellwether that was for them - and also possibly reacting to the surliness of labor in the 70s Doug's mentioned often.
In fact, the "union" of bosses that Bush used his Taft-Hartley executive powers on behalf of, the Pacific Maritime Association, is nothing a "union" of employers. Yet during the dockworker lockout of 2002, all you heard about in the news was not how evil the PMA was to its workers, how they were thugs and brutes, etc. - you just heard how thuggish and yet also coddled and spoiled ILWU members were. That anti-labor propaganda ias has always been int he US media to some degree but the 70s conservative counteroffensive had its effects.
Namely, the 70s seem to be the real turning point for the erosion of US labor and hence much of the real economic firepower of the US left. All of the conservative organizing of that period did not have zero effect. It seems like just the opposite. We've witnessed a steady erosion of unions since then. Most kids today think of unions as bizarre anachronistic holdover artifacts from the 1940s or something, organizations they see in movies, usually with mafioso, but that have zero relevance to them.
-B.
Marv Gandall wrote:
"The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday that there were five major strikes and lockouts in 2009 'the lowest number since the major work stoppages series began in 1947'. They affected 13,000 workers and resulted in 124,400 individual lost workdays - also 'record lows'."