The so called decline in union power — and the undermining of the American middle-class — is the result of an ongoing assault being waged by a very real and powerful “union-busting industry,” and the failure of the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board to stop repeat violations of the law. Those on the right too often, too easily and quite wrongly attribute this decline to a lessening in the support for unions overall.
The real story and whole truth is that a majority of working people clearly want to be in a union, and, by most public opinion measurements, that desire has not waned, and has even strengthened in recent years, Richard Freeman, co-director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, points out, “In 2002 the proportion of workers who said they would vote for a union rose above the proportion that said they would vote against a union for the first time in any national survey.”
If the activities of those who make union-busting their life’s work were to received even a small percent of the news coverage devoted to Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election, we might have a far different country — where at least a modicum of democracy is present at work, where most of us spend over half of our waking lives.
Stronger together!