The headlines on Labor Day highlight the President’s twitter attack (and retweets with spelling corrected) on AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. The Washington Post story of the skirmish reports on the decline of labor unions in recent decades: “Union membership nationwide has fallen markedly from the 1970s, with the percentage of American workers in a union dropping from about 25 percent in the 1970s to less than 11 percent in 2017, according to survey data. But among the general public, popular support for unions has risen steadily, to a 61 percent approval rating, a high point in more than a decade, according to Gallup polling.”
The good news, for working men and women, union members, and the Democratic Party (which relies on organized labor for vital support) is that steadily rising approval rating (from the Gallup organization’s graph presented in the image over this post). When asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?” a rising 62% of respondents surveyed approved, while only 30% disapproved.
The bad news is found in more detailed questions deeper in Gallup’s survey. For instance, this question and the most recent (August 2016) results:
Overall, do you think labor unions mostly help or mostly hurt workers who are not members of unions?
|
Mostly help |
Mostly hurt |
No opinion |
|
38% |
54% |
8% |
Organized labor has been under attack by conservatives for decades. The most recent body blow was the Janus ruling in June 2018. John Cassidy comments on the decision: “It marks the culmination of a decades-long anti-union campaign by conservative groups and billionaires tied to the Republican Party, such as the Koch brothers, the Uihlein family, and their allies. By funnelling money through tax-exempt organizations like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the Liberty Justice Center, and the Center for Individual Rights, these ultra-wealthy people have helped to finance a series of legal attacks on labor unions that represent ordinary working people who earn modest wages. Faced with the formidable challenge of overturning what most experts regarded as settled law, the well-funded union haters persisted, and eventually they found a court that was willing to overturn precedent: the John Roberts–Neil Gorsuch high court.”
The switch from Anthony Kennedy to Brett Kavanaugh will only intensify the SOCTUS majority’s assault on labor unions.
Although Donald Trump was elected with critical backing from the white working class (few of whom are unionized or even especially sympathetic to unions), he has done little to advance the interests of American workers. As Eric Levitz puts it (“15 Ways President Trump Has Hurt the American Worker”):
Donald Trump loves the working class as a mascot, but despises it as a class. The president will gladly take the side of the archetypal working man in his (largely imaginary) conflicts with environmentalists, welfare cheats, immigrants, and liberal elites — but never that of actual working people in their material conflicts with their bosses.
