The rise and decline of the American labor union movement

Labor Unions

The union movement ascended in the 19th century as a response to the poor working conditions on the Industrial Revolution. By coming together and mobilizing, workers were able to secure basic improvements to their work environment, as well as benefits such as funeral expenses, and basic protections against illness and old age.

The movement rapidly expanded into the early 20th century. The AFL reached a membership of 1.4 million workers by 1904.

The creation of the CIO in 1932 heralded an era of rapid union expansion as mass production industries were brought into the movement. The AFL and CIO joined forces in 1955, but shortly thereafter the union movement headed into decline.

In recent years, the movement has entered a phase of self-reflection. The AFL-CIO saw three of its four largest federations split from the group in 2005. Some of the key ideological differences were that the split groups wanted to shift spending priorities away from political campaigns and towards attracting new members, structural reorganization and a reduction of the central bureaucracy.

The union movement today is searching for its relevance. It still represents millions of members and is very active politically. However, many younger workers are disillusioned about organized labor, and many of the historical reasons for labor's existence have been addressed not only by governments but by corporations as well.

The Rise and Fall of Unions

Unions were able to rise to prominence as a result of several key factors. Among these were lack of government protection for workers, a poorly educated workforce, and eventually in the wake of the Depression, government intervention that aligned corporate and labor interests.

The appalling working conditions of the mid-19th century were a result of an oversupply of manual labor and lack of governance. Companies had the legal capability to exploit workers and the workers themselves did not have any power. By organizing, they were able to gain some leverage against their employers and win basic concessions.

Union recruiting was an aggressive endeavor at the time. The right of workers to organize was not widely recognized, and corporations used a variety of techniques include strikebreakers and the dismissal of organizers to discourage workers from organizing. Unions, for their part, typically sold themselves on the basis of the benefits they offered workers. They would plant an employee or group of employees in a target company and quickly begin to rally support for better working conditions, wages and benefits. If opposition emerged, the organizers would gather the support of other unions.

The Great Depression saw several significant changes to the legal environment that propelled union membership to greater heights. The New Deal's National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) aligned labor and corporate interests. In an unrestricted market, corporations frequently resorted to price competition in order to win market share. The result was cost-cutting, especially with regards to labor, one of industry's most significant inputs.

NIRA essentially was a deal between government and industry wherein corporations would be allowed to operate as cartels to increase prices so long as they shared those prices with workers. While NIRA was eventually ruled unconstitutional, many of its labor provisions carried over into the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Several industry-specific acts also sought to limit competition, thereby ensuring companies sufficient profitability to pay union wages.

This era saw the most dramatic increases in union membership since the movement began, and unionized peaked in 1945 at around 34% of the workforce. However, the demise of NIRA meant that the goals of labor and industry were no longer aligned. Corporations once again engaged in price competition, a goal which once again proved incongruous with a large unionized workforce.

The demise of unions has been a slow process. The legal framework of NIRA and NLRA has been gradually unwound. Forced back into price competition, corporations cut costs with automation and outsourcing. Both government and corporations have given American workers the benefits and wages that unions traditionally fought for. Increasing education has created a workforce more aware of its own rights, and more confident of its ability to achieve this without surrendering control of its future to a union. The result has been a precipitous decline in unionization over the past several decades, so much that the incoming workforce, Generation Y, only has 5% union membership.

The Future of the Union Movement

The movement continues to be under threat. Some of the key threats are a perceived lack of relevance, a hostile legislative environment, and the split between the AFL-CIO and CTWF. The lack of relevance of the movement derives from several factors. One is the increasing education of American workers, which makes them less likely to turn over control of their working life to the unions. Workers today see unions as representing an obsolete notion of the career path, an issue unionism has yet to address. Increasingly, companies are offering their employees packages similar to what unions offer. Both of these factors affect the historical trade-off workers had to make when considering the opportunity to join a union - to give up personal control over your career in exchange for better pay, benefits and working conditions. An increasingly educated workforce finds themselves more confident in taking control over their own fate, and a reduction in labor abuse reduces the benefits of organizing.

The legislative environment is another challenge. The seminal moment in anti-union public policy came when Ronald Reagan fired the airline traffic controllers in 1981. That one move stripped unions of their symbolic strength, and laws passed since then to foster greater globalization have helped reinforce that loss in law. Union leaders today see the need for a shift in the legislative environment as key to restoring their relevance.

The internal split amongst major union movements, however, has not helped. Both major groups have essentially the same goals, but clearly differ on the best ways to achieve those goals. Critics contend, however, that the movement needs solidarity in the face of declining relevance. The split, despite the ideological differences, also had a personal component to it, and this weakness at the top levels of union leadership inhibits their ability to enact change.

Another issue for the future of the union movement is that of globalization. In response to the globalization of economies, the notion of globalizing labor has gained currency. Traditionally, labor movements have been national, due to strong differences in national legislative environments. The only two nations with any serious degree of cross-border union integration were the U.S. And Canada. Recently, the United Steel Workers joined forces with the United Kingdom's largest union, Unite, to former a union spanning for major industrialized nations. This marks a significant shift in strategy for the union movement, which has historically addressed all issues on a local or national level.

One source of strength for the union movement of late has been the service sector. While the manufacturing sector has been a traditional source of strength for the movement, the service sector is now moving into a position of prominence. This sector represents opportunity as a source of growth for two key reasons. First, wage and benefit levels are generally low, and the workforce less educated. These are two traditional antecedents to labor organization. The decline in real wages that has occurred since the early 70s affects service sector workers more than any other group so whereas non-unionized manufacturing workers tend to make comfortable livings, non-unionized service sector workers tend to be near or below the poverty line.

The second reason is that the service sector has a higher percentage of minority employment than other sectors. In recent years, minorities have shown to be more apt to joining unions than have whites, and they receive more benefit from organization. Unionized blacks, for example, earn $8,000 more per year on average than their non-union counterparts. For Hispanics, this figure is $11,650. The traditional workplace inequities that drove the union movement during its heyday still exist in many sectors, and in places where those sectors are strong, for example the Los Angeles area, the union movement has been able to maintain its relevance.

Conclusion

The union movement has entered a new era. It has faced a steady erosion in both membership and relevance over the past several decades, owing to several key factors. The movement saw a major split in 2005 that has heralded a new era, in much the same way that the original AFL/CIO split in 1935 represented several key shifts in the movement.

Though unionism faces several challenges, including a hostile legislative environment, there remain reasons for optimism. There are still many pockets of the American workforce for whom unionism has relevance, key among them being the service sector, and jobs with a high percentage of minorities or new immigrants. While the movement repositions itself and re-evaluates its strategies over the coming years, it may yet return to prominence.