Are labor negotiations a thing of the past?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/01/12/2989675/are-labor-negotiations-a-thing.html

Latest Boeing vote part of larger trend for labor unions facing declining ranks, competition from right-to-work states

Are labor negotiations a thing of the past?
Staff, news servicesJanuary 12, 2014

SEATTLE — After battling for months with The Boeing Co.’s leadership, the company’s largest union approved an eight-year contract that trades hard-fought pension benefits for the right to build the 777X airliner — a bitterly fought concession that underscores unions’ uphill battle at the bargaining table.

The recent contract approved was negotiated not with a bankrupt city or a struggling manufacturer but with a company that delivered a record 648 planes last year and whose shares traded at all-time highs on the New York Stock Exchange.

It’s part of a larger trend for labor unions, which face declines in membership strength, reduced bargaining power because of right-to-work states and hostile public opinion.

“The fact that Boeing is doing this is going to send a message to other companies — we can now put that on the table,” said Leon Grunberg, a University of Puget Sound sociology professor who co-wrote “Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers.”

[CatholicEdHead]

1. There can be a resurange but it will be tough

Part of it is we are more individualistic as a society now than in the past, not as many community clubs, etc... Also capital can cross international borders than labor can and it is very difficult to organize in some countries where capital has moved to. The labor fights of the last 150yrs were mostly domestic as it took more effort for goods to be moved around, it is much easier now. Things can be turned around but it needs to use a modern paradigm approach, most of labor is still stuck in the old paradigm.