On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 02:12 PM, Les Schaffer wrote: > > Charlie suggests we look at average weekly earnings. Marv suggests union > membership.
Actually, Charlie used days lost to strikes. I looked at the number of strikes, workers off the job, and the % of days employers lost per annum which all showed sharp declines from 1982 despite the continued growth of the workforce. I haven't looked at the decline in union density, but it wouldn't surprise me if it tracked the decline in strike activity. Statistics aside, I remember the 70's as a relatively buoyant decade when both employers and unions were hiring and strikes were not uncommon. I wouldn't have been able to find work in industry and then as a union organizer if conditions had been otherwise otherwise. The SWP's "industrial turn" was ill-conceived tactically but it was predicated on the assumption that its members would be able to find work in industry and contribute to what was perceived as rising union militancy. By contrast, I remember the 80's as the period when industry began outsourcing work to China following Deng's mid-70's "opening up" and when government at all levels began privatizing and contracting out. That's when layoffs began in earnest, and unions were thrown on the defensive, with their anxious members looking to work-sharing schemes and better severance packages to save jobs and cushion the impact of layoff. They were noticably less confident in their ability to make gains against employers who were no longer experiencing recruitment and retention problems in conditions of labour shortage and who had consequently gained the upper hand. In the popular imagination, neoliberalism and the decline of the unions is with good reason identified with the stunning defeats of the 1981 PATCO strike in the US and the 1984 UK miners' strike a few years later following the election of Thatcher in 1979 and Reagan in 1980. You might also date the decline of the far left to the end of that decade. I still remember my disbelief and dismay at the FSLN losing the 1990 election to Chamorro and the USSR collapsing a year later. I think very few of us saw history moving in that direction in the 70's. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#29152): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/29152 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/104608543/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
