I originally posted this diary following the House passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (aka EFCA), a piece of legislation that would make it much easier for workers to organize unions. I've changed a few things to make my writing less time sensitive, and to serve as a long tail blog post. Few Americans(and I suspect sadly fewer Kogs) realize just how greatly American unions have declined in the past 40 years. I'm used publicly available data from the UnionStats webpage to show you what once was. Below I've mapped out union density as a percentage of the labor force.
The maps above show just how far we've fallen. In 1964 nearly 1 in 3 American workers (29.3%) was a unionized, by 2005 only 1 in 8 workers belonged to a labor organization. Bearing in mind that public sector union density has either increased or remained stagnant during that same period the collapse of workplace democracy in the private sector is all the more dramatic. What's even more shocking is the realization that the some of the greatest declines in union density have taken place in "red" states. Consider that in 1964 the top 10 states by union density included neither New York nor California, but did include a number of Great Lakes states.
In 1964, 6 out of the 10 most union dense states were in the industrial Great Lakes region. By 2005, this list had changed dramatically with New York and California joining the list and Indiana and Montana falling from the top 10 union states. Also note that the mean of the top 10 union states in 1964 was 39.8% (not weighed for population) while by 2005 this had fallen to 20.1%.
The only state to see union density rise between 1964 and 2005 is Hawaii, where there has been a 4.2% rise since the start of the Johnson administration. Consider that nearly half the country, 22 states in all, had union densities exceeding the 2005 New York union density at 26.2%. The
Consider also that while a Democrat running for president in 1964 could count on nearly a third of American workers being organized into largely supportive unions, by the time Bill Clinton became president in 1993 this had been cut in half. Unions need the Democratic party, but even more so the Democratic party needs unions. Because, no matter how much certain elements in the party pretend that by being anti-war we can win, the truth is that that's neccesary but not sufficient.
Someday, hopefully soon, the men and women of our armed forces will come home, but we've got a war raging at home that the progressive blogosphere has been largely deaf and dumb to. While news of the latest attack in Baghdad fills the front pages of "progressive" blogs on a regular, America's working people have few champions for workplace democracy. Forgive me for questioning the progressive nature of places that allow themselves to be led the media, but the truth is that the weakness of the blogosphere is it's failure to generate original material. To help set the agenda rather than just take it.
2006 was not about the Iraq War, that was neccesary but not sufficient. I want you to think about the "red" districts and states that Democrats were competitive in last year, and then look at the following list of union density decline 1964-2005.
So much for the victory of "libertarian" Democrats. The Democratic surge in 2006 didn't have a damn thing to do with libertarianism, what's happened is that "red" state Americans have woken up to the fact that the post war social contract that guaranteed workplace democracy and economic equality in exchange for labor peace has been broken. I came into contact with this data as an agnostic. I had my theories about what had happened, but I had no idea that the states with the most dramatic union declines would match so closely with the places where Populist Democrats surged in 2006.
It's imperative that going into 2008, Democrats aren't mislead into the belief that so long as candidates are anti-war they can also be in bed with the Robert Rubin and his Wall Street friends.
Issues of class and labor seem to pop up quite a bit on Daily Kos as sidebars or as impacting other topics in important ways, but they don't get their own diaries as often as they perhaps should. Yet work and class have enormous relevance in American life. Almost all of us must work for a living. Most of us who work owe a great debt to organized labor - even if we are not ourselves members of unions, we benefit from the advances unions have made over the years, in safety conditions, limited hours and overtime pay, benefits, child labor laws. And while a shrinking percentage of American workers are represented by unions, not only do union members earn more than their nonunion counterparts, but nonunion workers in highly unionized industries and areas benefit from employer competition for workers, leading to better pay and conditions. Class issues, too, apart from the question of organized labor, are central in many of the political struggles of the day. From bankruptcy legislation to the minimum wage to student loans, legislation affects people differently based on how much they make, what kind of access to power and support they have.
With this series we aim to develop an ongoing discussion around class and labor issues. Such ongoing discussions have emerged in the Feminisms and Kossacks Under 35 series, and, given the frequent requests for more (and more commented-in) diaries on these issues, we hope this series will accomplish the same. Entries will be posted every Tuesday night between 8 and 9pm eastern. If you are interested in a writing a diary for this series, please email Elise or MissLaura and we will arrange for you to be put on the schedule.
Update
I've found an interesting graph from the report on growing income inequality that I mentioned in my comment below.
The link between productivity growth and wage growth occurred in the 1970s, and parrallells the drop in union density.