by Mike Hall, Jul 17, 2008
The nation’s labor movement is “more relevant today than ever,” but unions need to help the general public “connect the dots” between a strong and growing union movement and improving their lives, says Phil Dine, veteran St. Louis Post-Dispatch labor reporter.
Dine, author of State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence, spoke to a lunch-time crowd at the AFL-CIO here in Washington, D.C., today.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka introduced Dine, who has spent more than 20 years covering unions and workers, and is one of the few remaining labor reporters in the mainstream media. Trumka gave Dine high praise, describing him as
not some Beltway pundit but a grassroots labor reporter.
Dine told the crowd that far too many people do not see the connection between union strength and their economic security. He says people tell him unions may have been needed once—a long time ago, when employers held the upper hand and workers were fighting to win fair pay, health care and safe workplaces. But with employer-provided health care vanishing, wages declining and many workplaces getting less safe, Dine asks:
Tell me, which of those don’t pertain to today?
In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when unions represented more than a third of the nation’s workers, unions used their strength and clout to improve the lives of all workers, union and nonunion.
But today, as millions of union jobs are being shipped out of the country and employers are waging increasingly aggressive battles against workers trying to form unions—aided by a National Labor Relations Board that is far more pro-employer than worker—union influence is not as strong as it once was.
It’s not a coincidence that the economic security and political strength of all workers has declined as labor has declined. People aren’t leaving unions, union jobs are leaving the country….63 percent of workers say the would join unions today if they could. Workers are playing by the rules, trying to form a union, but what happens? They get fired or the company drags the appeals on and on, and sometimes their votes aren’t even counted….I talked to moderate legal scholars, and they told me there is no country in the Western world where it is as hard to form union.
Dine also says that if unions are to grow and reclaim influence and strength, they must do a better of job of communicating their message to the public and stress important economic issues as values.
You have to help Americans connect the dots that a strong labor movement is good for the nation’s economic and national security….The union movement is more relevant than ever, conventional wisdom notwithstanding.
His book, available at The Union Shop Online, also explores narratives such as the grassroots political efforts of the Fire Fighters (IAFF) that saved John Kerry’s presidential campaign in Iowa in 2004 and the thousands of organizers in the Stewards Army spearheaded by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).