What’s the Matter With Unions?
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Immediately after the November general elections, conservatives in mass media warned the nation of three impending dangers to democracy. First, they warned Democrats not to start a “culture war” (as if the Right hadn’t already started it). They denounced any attempt to reinstate the media Fairness Doctrine as an assault on free speech. And they told us something called “card check” would destroy the nation’s economy.
The political blogs reacted to the “card check” threat in one of two ways. For the most part, right-wing bloggers repeated conservative talking points on the evils of card check. For the most part, left-wing bloggers asked, “what’s card check?”
For the past few years, conservative “think tanks” like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute have been cranking out talking points on the “evils” of card check. These talking points are dutifully picked up and repeated by conservative media (e.g., Fox News, most of political talk radio). Bloggers and activists for movement conservatism can repeat them by heart.
For many activists and bloggers on the Left, however, “card check” was barely on our radar, and progressive organizations were slow to give us ammunition to use against conservative talking points.
As explained in earlier posts, “card check” is a provision in the Employee Free Choice Act that would allow workers to choose to organize a union by checking a card instead of holding a secret ballot election. Interests groups opposed to the EFCA have paid for a huge misinformation campaign claiming, dishonestly, that EFCA “takes away” the right to a secret ballot vote and would make workers subject to intimidation by union organizers. In fact, the main purpose of the EFCA is to prevent employers from intimidating union organizers.
However, through well-made advertising and conservative media outlets such as talk radio, many Americans have heard only the anti-EFCA side of the argument. This says a lot about the decline of the power of unions in the U.S.
Public views of unions have changed dramatically over the decades. At Forbes, Karlyn Bowman writes about the lagging power of unions: “Unions, while still popular, have lost ground in recent years in workplaces and in public opinion. Just 7.8% of private sector workers are union members today, down from 17% a quarter-century ago.”
In polls take during the 1930s, Bowman continues, 70 percent of respondents said they favored unions. At the same time, a large majority also thought unions ought to be regulated by government. However, “In 1954, 46% said big labor represented “the greatest threat to the country in the future,” followed by 16% each who responded big labor or big business.” Today, however, only 11 percent of people polled see unions as the “greatest threat to the country.”
In the 1930s and 1940s the American Communist Party put a lot of energy into union organizing, and by the 1940s some unions experienced internal power struggles between pro- and anti-Communist Party factions. By the 1950s anti-union interest groups had planted an association between communism and unions in the public mind; this association lingers on the Right to this day, although the Communist influence in unions was never that strong and disappeared entirely decades ago.
During the 1960s and 1970s — the Jimmy Hoffa era — unions became associated with corruption and the Mafia. By the 1970s much of the political influence of unions had collapsed. And since that time, living standards for working-class Americans have declined, along with union membership.
Unions have an important role to play not only in securing wages and benefits but also in allowing workers to protect themselves from unsafe working conditions. This includes exposure to asbestos, which continues in spite of the known dangers of asbestos exposure — diseases such as lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis.
The public may be more receptive to unions today than it has been for years. But polls show more Americans oppose card check than support it, probably because they’ve been misinformed by the well-funded interest groups that oppose unions. It’s going to be a steep uphill fight.
March 31
Barbara O’Brien
