Reprinted from The New York Times by Paul Krugman on April 12, 2021.
“Labor activists hoped that the unionization vote at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse would be a turning point, a reversal in the decades-long trend of union decline,” writes Paul Krugman in The New York Times. “What the vote showed, instead, was the continuing effectiveness of the tactics employers have repeatedly used to defeat organizing efforts.
“But union advocates shouldn’t give up. The political environment that gave anti-union employers a free hand may be changing — the decline of unionization was, above all, political, not a necessary consequence of a changing economy. And America needs a union revival if we’re to have any hope of reversing spiraling inequality.
“Let’s start by talking about why union membership declined in the first place, and why it’s still possible to hope for a revival.
“America used to have a powerful labor movement. Union membership soared between 1934 and the end of World War II. During the 1950s roughly a third of nonagricultural workers were union members. As late as 1980 unions still represented around a quarter of the work force. And strong unions had a big impact even on nonunion workers, setting pay norms and putting nonunion employers on notice that they had to treat their workers relatively well lest they face an organizing drive. …
