From the Bureau of Depressing Charts

[jpgray]

(Via Doug Henwood)

[valerief]

1. You can't strike if you don't have a union. We've lost most of our unions. nt

[closeupready]

2. If you look at the years, there's an interesting parallel between Reagan's dismissal of air traffic

controllers members who were on strike in 1981 and the subsequent decline of unions.

Alan Greenspan actually credited Reagan's firing of them with a sea change in how private employers approached responding to union actions:

>>Perhaps the most important, and then highly controversial, domestic initiative was the firing of the air traffic controllers in August 1981. The President invoked the law that striking government employees forfeit their jobs, an action that unsettled those who cynically believed no President would ever uphold that law. President Reagan prevailed, as you know, but far more importantly his action gave weight to the legal right of private employers, previously not fully exercised, to use their own discretion to both hire and discharge workers.<<

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2003/200304092/default.htm

[customerserviceguy]

3. I did notice that

then the next thing I noticed was the decline in strikes during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. I wonder what was behind that.

[Gregorian]

4. It coincides nicely with our manufacturing base.

Which has several connotations