Organize!

While you still can.

Although I have plenty to complain about organized labor, American workers need to start from scratch and return organized labor - not a corrupt labor organization - to power.

The afl-cio, courted by Republican and Democratic administrations, became part of the Washington consensus. But, in the 1980s, that consensus began to fall apart when the Reagan administration drastically cut the nlrb's funding--causing huge backlogs of cases--and when its appointee to the board chipped away at employees' bargaining rights and at penalties for unfair labor practices. Bill Clinton tried to undo some of the damage, but George W. Bush has resumed Reagan's approach. Since becoming a majority in 2003, his appointees to the nlrb have taken business's side in more than 25 controversial cases. None of these rulings was earthshaking, but together, they presage an erosion of workers' ability to organize.

[...]

American workers are, of course, the principal victims of labor's decline. (Union workers enjoy a 15.5 percent advantage in wages over nonunion workers with comparable skills and are 18.3 percent more likely to have health insurance.) But our democratic system as a whole is also a victim. Unions are an interest group, but one whose scope and concern allows it to speak for the public interest. And, because of its numbers and electoral influence, labor has been able to check the often narrow interests of Washington's powerful business lobbies. Without labor's clout, it's unlikely that Medicare would have been enacted in 1965 or that the minimum wage would have been raised repeatedly over the last 50 years.

With labor's power ebbing, business has increasingly been able to dominate public policy issues, from taxes to environmental protection to Social Security. That might not bother Bush, Tom DeLay, and Karl Rove. But it's not a good thing for the rest of us.

New Republic article

U.S. workers' rights: They have the right to quit.

WORKING CLASS HISTORY TEST

From the Trenches

Other links on corporations and workers


One of my favorite graphics from the talented TJ.