State of the Union by Nelson Lichtenstein

Author:Nelson Lichtenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

In 1967 you could get yourself arrested if you were a striking school teacher in Baltimore. Sixty-five year old Henry Waskow taught history there. (Credit: Baltimore News American)

The Liberal Hour, but Not for Organized Labor

But the dramatic organizational effervescence in the public sector did not herald a revitalization of the larger trade-union movement. From the union perspective, the most remarkable thing about the 1960s and early 1970s was the extent to which organized labor proved so impotent, not only in terms of membership growth, but of policy-making clout, not to mention any capacity to make an impact on the rapid transformation of American political culture. The liberal hour had struck, Keynesian policy making reigned supreme, and union leaders were welcomed inside the White House as never before. Between 1962 and 1969 unemployment dropped by more than 50 percent, real wages continued their steady advance, and American workers exercised the strike weapon, especially during the years 1966 to 1973, to a degree not seen since the mid-1940s. And even during the administration of Richard Nixon, staunch AFL-CIO support for American foreign policy, in Vietnam and elsewhere, might well have been expected to generate a domestic dividend favorable to specific union interests.

Organized labor stood on the winning side when Congress passed landmark social legislation in this era, including the civil rights bills, Medicare and Medicaid, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). But the 1960s and 1970s were barren of virtually any legislative or ideological payoff for organized labor as an institution, or with notable exceptions, as a social movement with the kind of aura necessary to set the social and political agenda. It was a lost opportunity. Trade-union ranks grew by about 2 million during the boom years of the 1960s, but the proportion of all American workers in the unions continued its slow decline, from 30.4 percent in 1962 to 28.5 percent in 1973. Union political influence weakened even at the federal level, where long-sought labor-law reforms were defeated in 1965 and 1978, years during which both the White House and the Congress were controlled by the Democrats. In the mid-1970s, American trade unionism was far weaker—from a political, moral, and economic viewpoint—than it had been even a decade before.11

Why was this the case? During the 1960s the unions could not translate their economic power into policy influence. In all three administrations, economic policy makers believed that a macroregulation of the economy could spur growth and limit inflation, but efforts to reform the structure of the labor market, to strengthen the collective-bargaining power of labor, or to win some larger political control of investment and spending went nowhere. The Kennedy-Johnson tax cut that was passed in 1964 was predicated on principles of the most conservative, “commercial” Keynesianism, requiring of business no quid pro quo for the generous tax incentives offered by the government. Likewise, both Democratic administrations “jawboned” a set of wage-price guideposts during these years of growing inflationary worry, but this program of economic regulation was also divorced

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.