Sure… none of which I argued against.
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All of these reasons really intersect together, from the rise of the sunbelt, which is tight tied to the creation of the solid red south, the culture wars, the rise of right to work state laws, internal union issues, the boomers, etc.
Also, the runaway factory phenomenon is pretty well-established historically… first they went south, then they went overseas.
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Along with a few other things. But the thing is. There’s a lot less people building those things. Automation and other efficiencies have vastly reduced the number of actual laborers in a given factory. It takes a lot less people to build a car than it used to. So even with an upswing in manufacturing the last decade or so. We still see manufacturing as a pretty damn small portion of the over all employment picture. So even if you went and Unionised all those auto factories in right to work states. And all the Japanese factories here, where the organizational system is very much contingent on being non-union. You’d still have fewer union autoworkers than you used to. And the Auto Union would still be a much smaller, less influential group than they were in the past.
Its a feed back loop. Lower numbers of union workers makes it possible to erode union and labor rights. Leads to lower numbers of union workers. And so forth.
At no point was I trying to argue.
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Fair enough! Sometimes it can be hard to tell on the interwebs.
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Yep that’s how people can support a position that totally fucks them. Look at the decline of unions along with the decline of the middle class in this country. You could shrug it off as anecdotal but it’s been studied to death - organized labor didn’t do anything but lift the working class up.
Was there corruption? Yep.
Was there bad deals? Yep.
Was there stagnation? Yep.
Even with all these things they still did more positive than they cost - but people need some kind of slick sales pitch to make their feelings warm and fuzzy or they can’t understand why something is good (at the same time laughing at the guy in the non-union job making half what they are doing twice the work - but nope - can’t put two and two together on that one until you are forced out due to age instead of protected by seniority in your contract).
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I’ll just, er… drop this here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AQfGTDyjVSE
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Unions contributed to their own demise as they became businesses, and best the interests of the workers had to compete for what was best for the union.
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Quite a few unions bought the continuation of high pay and good benefits for their long time members by putting newly hired workers in the “lower tier”. Who should be surprised that younger workers saw the union as not representing them??
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Come you ranks of labor, come you union core
And see if you remember the struggles of before
When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door
And you started building links
On the chain, on the chain
And you started building links
On the chain
When the police on the horses were waiting on demand
Riding through the strike with the pistols in their hands
Swinging at the skulls of many a union man
As you built one more link
On the chain, on the chain
As you built one more link
On the chain
Then the army of the fascists tried to put you on the run
But the army of the union, they did what could be done
Oh, the power of the factory was greater than the gun
As you built one more link
On the chain, on the chain
As you built one more link
On the chain
And then in 1954, decisions finally made
Oh, the black man was a rising fast, racing from the shade
And your union took no stand and your union was betrayed
As you lost yourself a link
On the chain, on the chain
As you lost yourself a link
On the chain
And then there came the boycotts and then the freedom rides
And forgetting what you stood for, you tried to block the tide
Oh, the automation bosses were laughing on the side
As they watched you lose your link
On the chain, on the chain
As they watched you lose your link
On the chain
You know when they block your trucks boys by laying on the road
All that they are doing is all that you have showed
That you gotta strike, you gotta fight to get what you are owed
When you’re building all your links
On the chain, on the chain
When you’re building all your links
On the chain
And the man who tries to tell you that they’ll take your job away
He’s the same man who was scabbing hard just the other day
And your union’s not a union till he’s thrown out of the way
And he’s choking on your links
Of the chain, of the chain
And he’s choking on your links
Of the chain
For now the times are telling you the times are rolling on
And you’re fighting for the same thing, the jobs that will be gone
Now it’s only fair to ask your boys, which side are you on?
As you’re building all your links
On the chain, on the chain
As you’re building all your links
On the chain
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At least before I came to my senses and stopped paying attention a couple years ago, unionization was a very contentious topic among video game workers–with less than half supporting it. Not sure if that’s due to GOP-driven bias against unions, garden-variety classism about only blue-collar jobs being unionized, or if they’ve just all bought into the industry bullshit that if you don’t cheerfully work 100-hour weeks and regularly sleep under your desk, you just “don’t love games enough.”
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What’s all this about unicorns again?
If you want to blame Dems for letting unions die off, you should probably note that unions have pulled the Dems to the right on a number of issues. Police unions have slammed Dems for a long time now. The Teamsters famously endorsed Nixon over Carter. So Dems need to I guess keep unions alive but not listen to them to bring about the socialist paradise.
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An Eternal November election season, just a year before the Eternal September?
I didn’t read the rest of the thread after your post but in Canada that is flat-out inaccurate. We got unions for city employees, engineers, nurses, and on and on. The problem here isn’t lack of union members on the roll, but rather apathy because things are more or less reasonable for most people.
Based on my dad’s experience (as an American) the bigger problem is a targeted effort by establishment forces to keep people from identifying as individuals who would benefit from collective bargaining rights. It’s insidious and omnipresent.
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A plurality of minorities is a majority.
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Maybe part of the demise of workers’ rights go back to the fall of communism as an ideology. After the war in Europe and certainly in the 60s-70s, international communism was perceived as a real threat by the establishment and there was this diffuse idea that workers would indeed unite if they were not content. In some European countries, alternative non-communist unions were actually financed by the USA. I am not really sure what happened in the USA, but there were definitely lots of leftist movements in the 60s-70s, some obviously in favour of the then USSR.
The situation drastically changed in the 80s, as it became clear that the USSR was collapsing as a threat.
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But that wasn’t 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, or even 2000.
That was almost 30 years ago, Pre-Clinton. That WAS the Clinton THING. William Jefferson.
If you’re just noticing now, and this upsets you AND you’ve ever used the words “bernie bro” then it is time to listen, and then listen MORE. (in the sense of one, not personal)
Circular firing squads are the one liberal tradition i’ve never understood.
To explain the vulnerability of the US union movement you need to go further back.
An extremely abbreviated and approximate history:
Late 19th century: as with most other places, a vigorous union movement being strongly opposed by capital. One underappreciated factor is that the famous anti-trust laws of this “trust-busting” era were also used against unions; some would argue that this was their primary effect.
Pre-WWI twentieth century: The rise of the Wobblies, the killing of Joe Hill, the Presidentially sponsored revival of the Klan as a fascist militia (black people were not their only victims; union organisers were also popular targets).
Post-WWI: The first Red Scare. In the aftermath of WWI, the Wilson administration solidified the emergency powers it had accumulated during the war into a permanent security state. This is where J. Edgar Hoover got his start.
Then continuing fights throughout the Great Depression, with the union movement splitting between radical (IWW, CIO, UMW etc) and conservative factions (AFL, Teamsters, etc).
As a general rule, the radicals tended to be based in immigrant-heavy industries (mining, garment workers, etc) and pro-integration; the conservatives tended to be white, male, anticommunist and segregationist.
During WWII, much of the leadership of the conservative faction were coopted into government service and tasked with strike prevention. Most notable of these folks was George Meany.
After the war, this happened:
That included a bit requiring all union leaders to swear an oath rejecting communism. This was strongly opposed by the CIO-aligned radicals, but supported by Meany and the AFL crew.
Taft-Hartley pretty much killed off what was left of radical American unionism, and a few years later the Meany-led AFL absorbed what was left of the CIO.
The union movement persisted in some strength for a few more decades, but mainly in the Meany-style anticommunist and segregationist version that negotiated Bismarkian concessions from management in return for maintaining industrial docility. Once the USSR fell, there was no longer any external pressure, so even that faded away.
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