http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-welsh/the-glorious-future-that-_b_82241.htmlIan Welsh Fri Jan 18, 5:52 PM ET
Unions in America have been in a decline for over 60 years. Union membership has dropped from almost 35% of all workers in 1945 to less than 15% today. In fact, union membership has declined to almost exactly the same percentage as it was in 1930 before FDR took power and encouraged the growth of unions. The first crucial battle the unions lost came after FDR died, when over Truman's veto the Taft-Hartly Act was passed in 1947. Truman called the Taft-Hartly Act a "slave labor bill".
Since then unions have lost critical battle after battle; the mainline old unions centered around industrial concerns like GM and Ford have shrunk to a tiny fraction of their former self; and despite the efforts of the SEIU unions and others, new economy workers mostly have not been organized.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), created by the Wagner Act in 1935 as independent agency of United States Governments holds the official mandate to conduct elections for labor union representation and to investigate and remedy unfair labor practices. Under the Bush administration, the NLRB has:
* made it impossible for large numbers of workers to join unions(pdf);
* potentially reclassified many workers as supervisors (including many nurses) in order to remove them from unions;
* passed numerous rulings which treat employers in one way, and unions in another.
Unions have spent the last 7 years under assault by the Bush NLRB.
The union movement, it is fair to say, is in many respects in its weakest position in over 60 years.
Another 4 or 8 years of a Republican presidency could doom American unions, pushing them below 10% and subjecting them to more and more hostile NLRB rulings, which will cripple what ability they have to organize. Even a moderate Democratic president who halts the slide at the NLRB but doesn't reverse it will leave unions in a shaky situation.
Unions, even more than the US itself, need a new FDR. Without FDR unions would have never had their day and since FDR unions have been in a long steady decline. It's been nothing but downhill, whether under Republicans or Democrats, and absent a President who really cares about unions there's no reason to believe that decline will stop.
snip John Edwards has spent the last four years working with unions, walking their picket lines and making their cause his. He's clearly the most pro-union of the three remaining candidates; his primary issue is economic justice and he believes that corporations have too much power. His campaign, from the very beginning, was predicated on union support.
But unions didn't reciprocate.
FULL story at link.
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