When unions mattered, prosperity was shared

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/05/AR2010090502814.html

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, September 6, 2010

Watching the great civil rights march on television in August 1963, I couldn't help but notice that hundreds of people carried signs with a strange legend at the top: "UAW Says." UAW was saying "Segregation Disunites the United States," and many other things insisting on equality.

This "UAW" was a very odd word to my 11-year-old self, and I asked my dad who or what "U-awe," as I pronounced it, was. The letters, he explained, stood for United Auto Workers.

It was some years later when I learned about the heroic battles of the UAW, not only on behalf of those who worked in the great car plants but also for social and racial justice across our society. Walter Reuther, the gallant and resolutely practical egalitarian who led the union for many years, was one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s close allies.

Remembering that moment is bittersweet on a Labor Day when so many Americans are unemployed, wages are stagnant or dropping, and the labor movement itself is in stark decline.

Only 12.3 percent of American wage and salary workers belong to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from a peak of about one-third of the work force in 1955. A movement historically associated with the brawny workers in auto, steel, rubber, construction, rail and the ports now represents more employees in the public sector (7.9 million) than in the private sector (7.4 million). Even worse than the falling membership numbers is the extent to which the ethos animating organized labor is increasingly foreign to American culture. The union movement has always been attached to a set of values -- solidarity being the most important, the sense that each should look out for the interests of all. This promoted other commitments: to mutual assistance, to a rough-and-ready sense of equality, to a disdain for elitism, to a belief that democracy and individual rights did not stop at the plant gate or the office reception room.

FULL story at link.

[stray cat]

1. There were world wars as well but it's unlikely there was cause and effect