It’s not too late for America to empower workers again

Labor activists hoped the unionization vote at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse would be a turning point, a reversal in the decadeslong trend of union decline. 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.

America used to have a powerful labor movement. Union membership soared between 1934 and the end of World War II. As late as 1980 unions still represented around a quarter of the workforce. 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.

But union membership plunged, especially in the private sector, during the 1980s, and has continued to fall ever since.

Why did this happen? I often encounter assertions that the decline was inevitable in the face of automation and globalization — basically, that unions couldn’t deliver higher wages once employers had the option of replacing uppity workers with robots or moving production overseas. But the evidence suggests otherwise.

Although we talk a lot about robots these days, technological progress was actually faster during the high tide of unionization than it has been in recent years; output per worker hour rose almost twice as quickly from

1947 to 1973 as it has since 2007. That didn’t stop unions from having a big influence on wages.

Why are unions in America so weak now? While the details are in dispute, U.S. politics took a sharp anti-union turn under Ronald Reagan, encouraging employers to play hardball against union organizers. This meant that as the center of gravity of the U.S. economy shifted from manufacturing to services, workers in the growing sectors were left largely un-unionized.

And this decline in unionization has had dire consequences, playing a big role in rising inequality and wage stagnation. And workers have lost bar- gaining power as weak antitrust policies have allowed corporations to gain ever more market power.

One more thing: We don’t need strong unions just to level the economic playing field. We also need them to level the political playing field.

While it’s heartening to see the Biden administration proposing a rollback of Trump-era giveaways to corporations, it’s still true big money has vast political influence. It’s not simply a matter of campaign contributions. Corporate interests also get to set the terms of debate through their ability to offer lucrative jobs to former politicians and officials.

Organized labor used to provide a counterweight to corporate influence. Unions were never in a position to match corporate dollar power, but they could offer people power — the ability to mobilize their members and their members’ friends and neighbors in a way corporations couldn’t. And we need that kind of countervailing power more than ever.

So let’s hope that labor activists treat Bessemer as a learning experience, not cause for despair. We still need to get strong unions back.