Upper middle class liberals used to acquiesce in false equivalents like "Big business and Big labor". It had a surface plausibility when the UAW could negotiate with the Big Three and make gains. But it was never a real truth. Owning the means of production makes all the difference. - gwc
Economist's View: 'What Unions No Longer Do': "Jake Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Washington ... is out to change that. His book What Unions No Longer Do ... is an account of Rosenfeld’s attempt to empirically establish (mainly through a lot of regressions...) the consequences of Big Labor’s decline. ... [H]ere, for Labor Day, are the four big things that, according to Rosenfeld, unions in the U.S. no longer do:
Unions no longer equalize incomes. ...
Unions no longer counteract racial inequality. ...
Unions no longer play a big role in assimilating immigrants. ...
Unions no longer give lower-income Americans a political voice. ...
The decline of unions in the U.S. has often been painted as inevitable, or at least necessary for American businesses to remain internationally competitive. There are definitely industries where this account seems accurate. ... But ... even if the decline of unions was inevitable or desirable, that still leaves those tasks unions once accomplished — which on the whole seem like things that are good for society, and good for business — unattended to. Who’s going to do them now?"
'via Blog this'
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