That fact that the American labor movement has been on a sharp decline is not in question. Statistics released by the US Bureau of Statistics in the year 2013 on the summary of the unionization in the United States, the union membership stood at a paltry 11.3 percent in the year 2012. This was a level lower than in the year 2011 when the union membership was at 11.8 percent. The plummeting of union membership and the labor movement in general in the United States has been phenomenal in the last fifty years when it was at the peak with over 30 percent union membership rate (Wheeler, 2002).
This paper seeks to analyze this phenomenon by drawing on research by various scholars and commentators on the subject such as Yates, Brofenbrenner, Lowell Turner among other eminent thinkers in this field (Brofenbrenner, Sheldon, Hurd, Oswald, & Seeber, 1998). This paper's scope will be to lay down the factors that caused to the decline of the labor unions despite evidence showing that workers desire to join union movements. The desire for workers to join unions has been increasing since the 1980s and those that are not unionized are angling for representation by the unions (Yates, 1998). This paper, therefore, focuses on the reasons for the low unionization among workers despite the intense desire to be so unionized.
One of the reasons for the decline has been legislation. The enactment of statutes such as the Taft-Hartley Act, which has had the effect of putting restrictions on union activities together with the hollowing-out of the manufacturing base of the US with the decline of industries (Brofenbrenner, Sheldon, Hurd, Oswald, & Seeber, 1998). Another factor for the decline is the involvement of government in the custody of key provisions of unions. Issues such as overtime pay and guaranteed days off as well as rights of employees have been catered for in the laws that have been passed by the state thus effectively co-opting what was formerly the bulk of the unions’ work (Fantasia & Voss, 2004). In addition, there has been a reduced respect for organized labor due to changes in demographics and culture that created changes in the content taught at school and the reduced acclaim for labor movement leaders. Automation or adoption of technology has also emerged as a serious impediment to labor union activities and, therefore, a contributor to the decline of the labor movement in America (Feldman & Betzold, 1990). This is because various factories have introduced machinery which cut down on labor and expenses so as to maximize on profits, thus cutting down on jobs for workers who formed the majority of the labor unions.
There are various perspectives offered by various scholars and commentators on the subject, in a bid to explain the reasons attending the decline of the labor movement in the United States. Goldfield and Richard Freeman have attributed the decline of the American Labor Movement to demographic factors (Goldfield, 1987). They state that both structural and compositional factors account for between 20- 60 percent of the decline in labor unions (Freeman & Kleiner, 1990). Some of these important demographic factors are axiomatic, and they include geographic shifts from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt as well as the shifts in occupation from the blue collar jobs to the white collar jobs which are less inclined to unionization. Much as some factors may appear obvious in explaining the decline in labor unions, some of them are not so obvious. For instance, America has experienced a rapid increase in the labor force. The effect of a growing labor workforce is less unionization, unless labor movements and unions take initiatives to organize new workers into labor unions (Feldman & Betzold, 1990).
There is also the argument that unionization is a consequence of an active initiative and endeavor from the unions themselves. If this is the case, then the labor unions do share a part of the blame for the diminishing role of the labor movement. Goldfield avers that the problem facing these unions has been a lack of will and argues that they rarely put in the necessary effort (Goldfield, 1987). Similarly, the report by the AFL-CIO, argues that the labor unions simply hunkered down instead of organizing and opted for the myopic path of seeking to protect the subsisting contracts of members in lieu of organizing the new members (AFL-CIO, 1996). Consequently, some of the sectors of the economy that are highly dynamic such as the services sector led to reduced unionization. Kate Brofenbrenner offers a succinct and lucid insight. She argues that the service sector mainly employed women and other people of color. More so, there was an increase of white collar employees, and other professional and technical jobs save in the public sector who were least affected by the unionization activities (Brofenbrenner K., 1983). This poor record of unions as against women and other marginalized races is manifest in not only a failure to organize but also in the internal recalcitrance or inability to address issues that were being brought forth by the feminists and the civil rights movements. Milkman is of the view that the presence of females in unions was way below that of their presence in the labor workforce as a whole and that the gains in leadership for women in the labor movements has been quite modest. She supplements this argument by stating that women have not been organized as women but rather as members of occupational groups that were mainly made up of females in their structure and makeup with the result that women were in, but not of the labor movement (Milkman, 1997). This reduction in organizing during the post-war period when there was increased focus on contract negotiation and enforcement of work rules through a system of grievance, a factor that led to an increase in unions’ members. According to commentators that subscribe to this institutional explanation of the decline of the labor movement, the internal factors within the labor unions led to an expending of fewer resources and energy to the task of organizing (Western, 1997). Nonetheless, there is a plausible explanation for the devotion of less energy and resources to organizing as there existed powerful hindrances to effective organizing that emanated from outside the unions themselves. Some of these barriers did originate from the labor legislation as well as in the vigor and determination of the employers who were opposed to unionization.
The other significant cause of the decline of the labor movement in America has been both the state and the legal system or legislation in the country. Of all major democracies the world over, the United States has arguably the most difficult condition for unions to thrive. This may be explained by the fact that America has neither had a labor party or social democratic party. The purpose of the New Deal industrial relations system as articulated was to institutionalize relations between workers and thereby avail a mechanism of resolution of disputes with minimum disruptions, namely; Collective bargaining. Labor unions are a part of the legal regime that seeks to shape the organization of workers through specifying the legally permissible and impermissible ways of collective action and workplace representation in the legal sense (Brofenbrenner, Sheldon, Hurd, Oswald, & Seeber, 1998). The labor law in America grants workers the right to self-organize through the formation of labor unions that act as the only legally recognized bargaining agent for workers at the workplace. However, the same labor law does indeed protect the rights of employers in so far as influencing the process of bargaining is concerned. Consequently, employers can indeed, and do indeed, oppose the decisions of their employees in regards to unionization. Such a legal regime is unique to other industrial democracies like Germany and Japan, which are doing better in terms of unionization. In addition, a series of decisions from the courts have further eaten away at the rights of employees to unionize whilst at the same time expanding the rights of employers. It is important to note that though the right to go on strike for workers is granted in the labor law in America; employers are also guaranteed the right to maintain production during such strikes. A good illustration of this conundrum and the resultant negative effects on unionization and workers in general is as explained by Fantasia (Fantasia & Voss, 2004). Fantasia argues that though workers may not be sacked for going on strikes as their right to strike or picket is guaranteed by the law, they may be replaced on a permanent basis so as to maintain production as the law provides (Fantasia & Voss, 2004). Such a position as subsisting leads to a decline of labor movements as it curtails the right to mobilize strikes as labor unions since workers fear losing their jobs in the event that they go on strike. Before dispensing with the legal regime and the state, it is critical to take a look at some of the labor laws that have been passed over the years that have had a negative effect on labor unions in America. One of the important legislation that greatly led to the decline of the labor movement in the United States was the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The Act simply placed restrictions on labor unions by proscribing picketing and strikes as well as allowing for the right to work laws that had the effect of barring union shops. It led to a weakening of the labor unions and cast a dent on their organizing capability (Yates, 1998).
Ideological issues are also to blame for the decline of the labor movement. Academics, business honchos, political leaders as well as the media cultivated a paranoid view among the Americans on anything that appeared to lean left. These ideological and legal pressures have had the effect of rendering the communist and the socialist parties less effective (Freeman & Kleiner, 1990).
The other reason the decline of the labor movement in America is globalization and neo-liberalism. Whereas as has been shown above the legal regime in United States creates an unfavorable environment for organizing of workers, this legal framework makes an even bigger impact when examined in the context of globalization and neo-liberalism. According to Western, in most of the societies that were industrially advanced, there was an increase in the rate of unionization in the 1970s with the exception of the US (Western, 1997). Nonetheless, this unionization went on a slump following globalization and as neo-liberalism took hold in the 1980s. A contributing factor to this weakening of unions in the globalization era was the fragmentation of the labor markets thereby invoking an increasing competition among workers as bargaining moved from the industry to plant level (Western, 1997). Globalization cast a dent on unionization in at least two ways. The first argument against globalization was that it led to an increasing proportion of workers who were in direct competition with some other semi-peripheral labor. In another way, it became increasingly onerous for the state to manage its part of the world economy owing to globalization with the effect of weakening the movements like the labor unions that depended on state power to function. The US market was most affected by neo-liberalism with various instances of privatization, outsourcing and increasing cases of part-time and contingent employment (Turner — Katz, & Hurd — 2001). These developments and processes pose threats and problems for labor movements as their continued existence is dependent on the continued restriction and regulation of the labor markets.
It must be mentioned that the level of hostility towards labor unions among employers is peculiar to the United States and is a factor that has led to the diminishing role of the labor movement. Friedman notes that there were systematic attempts by employers to ensure union-free workplaces especially in the 1970s through various methods such as outright intimidation, delays and other campaigns (Friedman, Hurd, Oswald, & Seeber, 1994). A good illustration of this increasing resistance to labor unions was the reduction in the number of elections where employers merely agreed to hold elections without contesting the election through the National Labor Relations Board. According to studies conducted by Brofenbrenner, a vivid illustration of how employers used information campaigns in opposition to labor unions is given (Brofenbrenner, Sheldon, Hurd, Oswald, & Seeber, 1998). For instance, the study shows that for elections held in the year 1987 and 1994, around 87 percent of employers engaged external consultants with 64 percent of the employers holding in excess of five captive audience meetings that required the employees to listen to anti-union presentations. The study also found that around 76 percent of employers made use of supervisors to conduct one-on-one meetings, who asked them about the views of the workplace and made a case against unionization and then demanded a response from the workers (Brofenbrenner, Sheldon, Hurd, Oswald, & Seeber, 1998).
Conclusion
As evident from the foregoing, a myriad of factors have caused the decline of the labor movement in America. The significance of the labor movement and its continued existence cannot be gainsaid. Strong labor movements and unions protect workers who are usually at the mercy of employers, keen on exploiting them. Indeed, the great wage differential that is existent in America today is partly as a result of dying labor unions that lack the wherewithal to agitate for the rights of workers. The challenges for the labor unions are thus to organize new and more workers that total to over a million workers every year. The vastitude of this task necessitates a paradigm shift of the hitherto practices and not a mere replication of the subsisting practices.
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