On 2013-05-26, at 12:00 PM, Eubulides wrote:
> Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture confronts one of the most vexing questions with which labor activists and labor academics struggle: why is there so much opposition to organized labor in the United States? Scholars often point to powerful obstacles from employers or governmental policies, but Lawrence Richards offers a more complete picture of the causes for union decline in the postwar period by examining the attitudes of the workers themselves. Large numbers of American workers in the 1970s and 1980s told pollsters that they would vote against a union if an election were held at their place of employment, and Richards provides a provocative explanation for this hostility: a pervasive strain of antiunionism in American culture that has made many workers distrustful of organized labor.
"Large numbers" of anti-union workers no doubt, although I've seen polls where the majority of workers surveyed said they would welcome a union in their workplace. It seems there would be no need otherwise for the body of labour legislation and actions by regulatory agencies which make it difficult for workers to freely exercise their right to organize and join unions without fear of employer retribution.
I attribute the pervasive strain of anti-unionism in American culture primarily to the poisonous influence of racism and imperialism which has turned many American workers to the right, particularly that part of the working class which is white and lives and works in the sun belt states.