Jim D. wrote:
capitalist governments almost always favor narrow craft-type unions that don't rock the political boat. They may not get what they want, of course, but that's what they favor.
================================= All things being equal, it's true governments and employers would rather see a divided labour movement composed of multiple small and weak unions than a powerful united one, but their responses are not really conditioned by whether unions are structured on craft or industry lines.
The critical distinctions are between militant and compliant unions, and whether the period is one where the balance of class forces and economic circumstances favours the strengthening or the rollback of union rights. The Roosevelt administration, for example, was actually more closely tied to John L. Lewis' CIO than to the craft-based AFL, and the Wagner Act provided the legal framework for the CIO's expansion into the auto, steel, rubber, and other heavy industries. On the other hand, PATCO was as privileged and as craft-based a union as you could get, but the Reagan administration smashed it while maintaining the peace with the big industrial unions. Other advanced capitalist states have operated on the same premises and behaved in much the same way.
