Amazon vote shows need to empower workers again

Labor activists hoped that 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 maybe 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. During the 1950s roughly a third of nonagricultural workers were union members. 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.

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.

The impact of globalization is also often overrated. Around three-quarters of employment in advanced countries is in “nontradable” activities that can’t be moved overseas, a proportion that hasn’t changed much over time.

In fact, Amazon is a case in point: While many of the goods you can buy online are imported, Amazon’s market position rests on a huge system of warehouses — like Bessemer — that employs hundreds of thousands of workers. And those warehouses can’t be moved overseas; their whole purpose is to maintain inventories close to major markets, so that Amazon can deliver things in a matter of days.

If the service sector were unionized, then, employers wouldn’t find it easy to replace empowered workers with robots or offshore production.

Why are unions in America so weak? 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.

And this decline in unionization has had dire consequences. In their heyday, unions were a powerful force for equality; their influence reduced the overall inequality of wages and also reduced wage disparities associated with different levels of education and even race. Surging union membership appears to have been a key factor in the “Great Compression,” the rapid reduction in inequality that took place between the mid-1930s and 1945, turning America into a middle-class nation.

Conversely, the decline of unions has played a big role in rising inequality and wage stagnation.

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.