How Dwindling Union Power Helped Usher In Trump
by Alan Draper at the American Prospect
http://prospect.org/article/how-dwindling-union-power-helped-usher-trump
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Today’s unions, however, find it harder to socialize their members or reach new ones with an alternative, more inclusive narrative that can compete with what right-wing populists like Trump offer. Unions now deliver less of a wage premium, which reduces the political legitimacy members are willing to grant them. And their ability to organize is increasingly blocked by intransigent employers.
It’s as if there is a virus infecting members of the white working class, and the only organization that can inoculate them and provide the antidote has been eviscerated and hollowed out. There are fewer distributors of the vaccine, and the medicine they prescribe is too weak to cure and stop the spread of the disease.
The attraction of the white working class to Trump is not about “the wages of whiteness,” or defending white male privilege. Certainly, there are “deplorables” among them, just as there are racists and xenophobes among the middle and upper-classes. Let’s not romanticize white workers. But the bottom line is that unions are no longer able to reach such workers to challenge these values. In the absence of unions, disaffected and marginalized workers are increasingly susceptible to racism and xenophobia.
The rise of Trumpism would not have been possible without the dismantling of the labor movement that preceded it. Unions are among the few organizations with the institutional means to transmit progressive values to workers, and workers view political socialization by unions as legitimate because they defend their interests at work. But with the demise of the labor movement, their signal is weaker, and a smaller percentage of the workforce is organized to receive it.
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