Propaganda works, if it didn't, Walmart and amazon wouldn't be spending so much money on anti-union propaganda. Nothing terrifies them more than the thought of multiple stores, warehouses, or development centers unionizing.
But the big wins were almost a century ago.
The red line isn't normalized by workforce size, but it suggests the big gains (five-day work week, 8-hour workday) were before unions really became powerful. Unionization was only a 15-year trend, then it stalled-out.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/United_S...
In the 19th century, Labor unions functioned more like activist group then unions in the modern sense. There were quite a few of them, they often included members across businesses and even industries (of these IWW still exists and still functions like this). There were no protections for collective bargaining so there was no need for unions to mass enroll whole businesses, what was important was organizing for every event, and build a solidarity across workers, rather then unionizing whole workplaces. The union’s job was to organize direct action and build up solidarity around them. A successful strike had union members and non-members alike striking in solidarity. A very successful strike crossed many and diverse workplaces. As you can imagine these often turned violent when scabs refused to participate (as they were allowed to), or when unions with conflicting ideologies were competing for members and propaganda.
This changed in the new deal era, particular when the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act; NLRA) was enacted in 1935. And you can see the uptake in union memberships on your graph. This act legalized collective action and protected workers in labor unions. This formed the basis unions as we know them today. From then on it became more important to organize each workplace, rather than each direct action, and the protections would only apply for members, not participants. So memberships suddenly became more important than participation.
Comparing memberships between these two eras is effectively comparing apples to oranges. While today membership count is an indicator of effectiveness, this was far from truth prior to the New Deal.
Another way to look at this is that there hasn't been much progress in the labor market over the last ~50 years. Wages have been stagnant for that long, states introduced legislation that neutered unions and organization is at a comparative low. Given the trend of replacing employees with contractors who have less rights and benefits, you can even say that we're taking steps backward compared to where we were not too long ago.
The open question is whether this is the cause of effect of the decline of unions. I can make a case for either.
I'm not allowed to pick up an item sitting twenty feet away on the loading dock.
(Both the above personal experience)
They make public transit too expensive: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mta-track-increase-numb...
Let's not pretend it's all sunshine and roses.
Perhaps because some sockets are one the same circuit and they don't want to overload that? (At best, risking a power outage because of a circuit breaker going off and at worse a fire if you happened to plug your electrical strip into another electrical strip)
> I'm not allowed to pick up an item sitting twenty feet away on the loading dock.
Perhaps because there may be active work or equipment moving around and you aren't wearing high viz and aren't communicating with someone operating heavy equipment?
These 2 things, though, aren't union related. 1 of them (the electrical strip) may not even be regulation related but rather simply that the organizer has had problems with this in the past. The why for these rules aren't exactly hard to imagine or understand.
> They make public transit too expensive
Public transit is expensive because we refuse to accept the notion of operating it at a loss. We are perfectly capable of partially or fully subsidizing public transit through taxes. In fact, we'd probably save money by running it completely off of taxes because we'd eliminate all the measures we take to ensure someone isn't riding for free. Someone hopping a ticket stand wouldn't jeopardize our ability to keep the trains running. We could further save the tax payers money by adding enough public transit to eliminate or severely reduce the need to purchase cars. Directly saving money on car mileage/purchases/insurance and indirectly saving money by the reduced climate impact and cleaner air (less lung cancer).
Some public services are worth taxes. We (usually) think that way about police, fireman, libraries, and public schools. Heck, we already think that way in terms of transport (most roads aren't built through usage fees).
If anything that article supports the idea that unions protect people, and without them companies will push even more irresponsible decisions that put people at risk for the sake of profits.
Granted that was a while ago.
Maybe the world has changed in the last 42 years, and it'd be helpful to qualify stories like these (where the original poster says he is not allowed, present tense) with where and when they've happened.
So the electrical strip thing seems plausible to me.
A little less restriction at tradeshows from union rules would be welcomed and convention centers would be smart to bargain with the union for it.
As for Silicon Valley the hatchet job at Twitter wouldn't have been so easy if the company had been unionized.
I really wish the TVC at Austin Google well in their efforts to unionize. When Pichai gets almost a 1/4 billion a year in compensation surely there is room to pay folks at the bottom better. It shouldn't take several years contracting at Google to get a 50 cent raise to $14. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-subcontractors-face-lo...
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigation/bart-inspector-gene...
Unions can be great, but they can also abuse their power.
Mathematically Unions are there to serve the bottom 20% of the members while severely hampering / hindering top performers.
If you want to Union then please buy products / services from only Union shops and hire your local gardener, plumber from Union
Number of Firms that provide exceptional product/service with 100% union : ZERO
Number of Firms that provide exceptional product/service with 0% union : 1000+
The only people who are brainwashed are the progressives / liberals
Number of top performing athletes, with million dollar contracts and unions, that entertain hundreds of millions of people: All of them.
Number of tech companies with offices in the EU that also hire unionized employees and haven't cannibalized themselves: All of them.
Now we need a religious version of the "In Mice" meme [1] that just ends "IN FROGS."
John 3:6: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit... IN FROGS.
> Humans are tricky.
This made me chuckle! Reminds me of the frog in boiling water adage:
If you put a frog in cold water and gradually raise the temperature, it will be imperceptible to the frog. They’d gladly boil to death. However, if you turn up the heat quickly - they’ll jump out.
A long winded way of saying - with time, we become comfortable in the status quo and expect things to stay a certain way. Any gradual shift is imperceptible to us, until many changes accumulate and reach a tipping point. And that is when we become disillusioned.