What killed American Union's power?

[Taverner]

Back at the turn of the century, American Unions were the model for most of Europe's Unions

We had organized, IWW had tremendous power, and Eugene Debs' popularity was growing

Then comes WWII, and it seems as if after the war, the power of unions had already crested and was pulling back

Fast forward to the 1980s when being in a union brought scorn and hatred from the Reagan Troops

Maybe I'm incorrectly looking at American History...but why were we on the glorious road to Socialism in the 1920s and 1930s, only for the tide to turn the other way and stay that way?

[edhopper]

1. Ronald

Fucking Reagan

[Taverner]

2. But unions were losing power way before Reagan was Prez

I remember a lot of Bob Dole Republicans hating, literally hating unions

The Movie "American Dream" did take place in the Reagan years, but what led up to it didn't

[Trajan]

4. Reagan was in pwer in the early eighties ...

Bob Dole ? .... Wasnt he in the late 80's early 90's ?

Your time line is backwards ...

Repukes hate unions, even when they joined them and benefited from their power ....

Self loathing ....

[lpbk2713]

3. Relentless assault by the GOP.

Their message was ALL unions were corrupt top to bottom.
And ALL union members received extravagant wages for sitting on their butts and doing nothing.
It's the tried and true GOP philosophy --- tell a lie often enough and loud enough and sooner
or later it becomes accepted as the truth.

[NWHarkness]

5. In part, they were victims of their own success

As the unions improved working conditions for not just their members, but for workers in general, more and more people started to feel like they didn't need them anymore.

[virgogal]

9. I think you nailed it.

[etherealtruth]

10. Sadly, this has a ring of truth to it

[moondust]

11. Yep, plus offshoring and GOP/corporate attacks.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. That, and McCarthyism. In the 50s the communist witch hunts led

to purging of communists and socialists from the unions - in the 20s & 30s there were a lot of socialists involved in labor organizing. The purge led to a power vacuum, and a LOT of mob influence came into the unions, some more than others, which further caused distrust of unions. By the time most the mob influence was eliminated we were in the 60s and Vietnam, and the 'newly patriotic' anti-communist unions often took a stand against the anti-war protesters, splitting them from Democratic support, furhter weakening them.

Republican propaganda tarred all unions with the mistakes, or perceived mistakes, of a few - there were commies in the AFL, so ALL unions were full of commies; the mob controlled some longshoreman unions, so ALL unions were mob-controlled. And don't even start with the Teamsters...

It worked.

[Name removed]

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[ingac70]

7. The working class voting against their interests. n/t

[LARED]

8. a few things come to mind

Loss of manufacturing jobs in America

Global competition.

Union wage parity in many sectors

[badtoworse]

13. Unions were so focused on management as their adversary...

that they ignored competition from workers in foreign countries who were willing to do the same job for less money.

[Bluenorthwest]

14. Yes, all those 'willing' workers in Communist China!

So eager and willing!

[badtoworse]

15. Yes, China and a lot of other developing countries.

The point is that you ignore competition at your own risk. The unions did that and it bit them in the ass.

[Taverner]

18. agreed - they should have spent the 50s-70s lobbying for tarriffs

And NAFTA should have had Union input in it

Globalization WILL happen, its unavoidable

How you deal with it, however, is not a given

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

16. Being a Union member

and a Steward, or Delegate as we are called today, I think one of the biggest reasons is a piss poor Public Relations program. If you were to top 10 people on the street and ask them what they thing unions are all agbout, I'll bet you'd get 'lazy workers, corrupt bosses, illegal campaign contributions'.
Another issue is each union fails to realize that in-fighting amongst unions doesn't serve the cause. The IWW had it right, ONE UNION. All working people in one union or at least have all unions support each other. But using the old divide and conquer tactic Capital manages to pit us against each other and we do their dirty work for them.

[Populist_Prole]

21. That's all too true. I think it's a matter of loss of critical mass, and perhaps classism

As far back as I can remember, thanks to the constant anti-union drumbeat by the corporate press and media, so many people see them as just the way you described. If someone they know or knew is a union member, and doing well, it is somehow undeserved.

Due to the snowballing of loss of industry due to offshoring, there are less and less people that do real work or make things, and more in the way of paper pushing. Indeed, it's so ingrained as to be a cliche. Speak of the workplace, and the automatic response is "the office". Traditional unionized type jobs are smaller in number and people employed as such are below the radar, culturally speaking. As labor lost its critical mass, the traditional Democratic party morphed into some DLC "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" organization, just to be relevant as an entity.

[2Design]

17. lies and truth and stories of people goofing off and being paid

all the examples are like the welfare queens as if it is all and not just a few

[Odin2005]

19. They became complacent tools of the Corporate establishment After McCarthyism.

They need to go back being radical activist organizations.

[Initech]

20. 40 years of unregulated, out of control corporate rule

[ixion]

22. Watch 'Hoffa' I think it shows what happened pretty clearly

Unions became the institutions they sought to reject initially. That's what happened.

[Bennyboy]

23. Jimmy Hoffa. the boogieman for the Bosses.

I think finally they were able to put a sinister face to unions and union bosses.

[bettyellen]

24. after the war salaries were generally high, a middle class emerged and promptly forgot how they came

to exist in the first place. Interesting also is how integration in the workplace coincided with an overall suppression of wages.
It;s like the big bosses decided they could stand employing women and african americans once they figured out how much less they could get away paying.

[Populist_Prole]

28. Amazing what so many take for granted today

The commonly trotted out bromide of "Unions were needed back when employers were unscrupulous, but we don't need them today" has got to be the lamest argument ever on the subject. They are not very observant, or more likely "movin' on up, to the east side" has made them snobby.

[ThomWV]

25. Union protections and rights earned by union people were given to non-Union employees

People found out that when there was a Union at the job place they got the benefits no matter if they belonged to the Union or not - so why pay any dues. People who would have been treated like dogs got good working conditions because of what Union people did years before but don't have the good sense to understand where their good fortune came from. And over time Union participation started dropping and more and more of these free-loaders go to enjoy what the Union people had earned but of of course were unwilling to pay for themselves. They thought they were somehow special or somehow entitled to earn a living wage, or have benefits of some sort - they don't understand that these things were all earned for them by the blood, sweat, and tears of Union men and Women who stood up for something.

I hate a fucking Scab - the lowest form of mother-fucker that ever lived.

[peace4ever]

26. When manufacturing started moving offshore, it was the beginning of the end

if you don't have a job, you have nothing to bargin for.

coupled with the heavy propaganda against them from the M$M for decades, they were fighting a losing battle.

however, with the assault against them by our legislatures, and all the history people are wise to today, people, with nothing more to lose, are starting to fight back.

better days ahead.

[Citizen Worker]

27. The Palmer Raids of the Wilson administration began the attack on Unions. During WW II Labor agreed

to not strike and abide by Roosevelt administration's setting of wages and prices. Following WW II Labor and capital came to agreement that essentially gutted the social justice aspect of the Labor movement. Raygun fired the air traffic controllers and we did nothing in response and here we are today picking the lint out of our navel wondering what happened.

[mmonk]

29. Primarily the Third Way or New Democrat movement after

Reagan's governance. That left unions with less union support in DC.

[SheilaT]

30. By the end of the 1970's there had been at least

a decade of anti-union rhetoric. There was almost nothing countering that rhetoric from the unions themselves. Average working people who had greatly benefitted from the presence of unions in the workplace, had no idea that their wages and benefits were as good as they were because of the unions elsewhere. States began to pass "right to work" laws, which were really "screw the unions" laws. By the mid-1970's I constantly heard co-workers routinely trash-talk unions, oblivious to what we gained because the unions were out there, even though our employee group was not unionized.

And so once Reagan became president, he could fire the air traffic controllers and wind up with Lane Kirkland, the head of the AFL-CIO on his side (which still staggers me to this day) and THAT was the death knell for the unions. Even now, I hear statements from people who ought to know better that "unions have gone too far" and other such crap, as if management actually cares about workers and will do all possible to protect them, pay them well, increase their benefits regularly. Ha! We are moving rapidly backward to the conditions that existed towards the end of the 19th century, although I have hope that thanks to modern media, the rank and file are being riled up and the unions will gain new strength in coming years.