Don't be a player-hater to the unions
The following is from State of the Union: A Century of American Labor by Nelson Lichtenstein.
p. 142 - "individual trade unions were now internal oligarchies, administratively top-heavy with technicians and officials, and increasingly prochial in their bargaining strategy and political outlook. This was a product of much history and politics: the birth of the new unions under and New Deal wing, the forced-draft quest for production and social peace during World War II, and the anti-Communist purge that chilled the union movement's more adventuresome spirits.
"But even more important, the stolid quality of postwar U.S. unionism reflected the institutional constraints and legal structures under which the unions were forced to function. Ironically, it was the very decentralization and fragmentation of the poswar bargaining system, the hostility of management, and the relative weakness and vulnerability of the labor movement that generated a huge stratum of full-time officials, put a premium on authoritarian leadership, devalued independent politics, and opened the door to a whole set of corruptions that became an integral part of the postwar union mythos."
--
As my boy Nelson (I'll call him "Nelly") Lichtenstein explains here, all that bad stuff you heard about unions is actually the fault of the hostile environment in which American unions were forced to develop. I try to never believe anything I read right off the bat, but there is a part of me that wants to say, "So there! Hah!" to all the union-haters out there. The moral is, don't hate the union players, hate the postwar industrial bargaining game.
p. 142 - "individual trade unions were now internal oligarchies, administratively top-heavy with technicians and officials, and increasingly prochial in their bargaining strategy and political outlook. This was a product of much history and politics: the birth of the new unions under and New Deal wing, the forced-draft quest for production and social peace during World War II, and the anti-Communist purge that chilled the union movement's more adventuresome spirits.
"But even more important, the stolid quality of postwar U.S. unionism reflected the institutional constraints and legal structures under which the unions were forced to function. Ironically, it was the very decentralization and fragmentation of the poswar bargaining system, the hostility of management, and the relative weakness and vulnerability of the labor movement that generated a huge stratum of full-time officials, put a premium on authoritarian leadership, devalued independent politics, and opened the door to a whole set of corruptions that became an integral part of the postwar union mythos."
--
As my boy Nelson (I'll call him "Nelly") Lichtenstein explains here, all that bad stuff you heard about unions is actually the fault of the hostile environment in which American unions were forced to develop. I try to never believe anything I read right off the bat, but there is a part of me that wants to say, "So there! Hah!" to all the union-haters out there. The moral is, don't hate the union players, hate the postwar industrial bargaining game.
posted by jlhart7 at 9:58 AM
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