Article: The Dreaded U Word

Surprisingly the US doesn't have the lowest rate of union membership in the industrialized world. The ineffectiveness of American unions isn't based on low membership, but on negative public opinion and the paralyzing effect of the Taft Hartley Act.

At present the rate of union membership in the industrialized world is determined by two main factors: the size of the public sector work force (which tends to have high unionization rates) and the percent of the private sector represented by small business (as opposed to corporations), which tend to be extremely hard to unionize. Finland (at 74%) and Sweden (at 71%) have the highest rates of unionization owing to their large public sectors. Italy and Canada (both at 30%) and the UK (at 27%) have fairly high rates, as they still have large public sectors. Germany , where both the manufacturing and public sector are strong, is 27% unionized. Greece , despite its large public sector, has a relatively low rate of unionization (23%) as 93% of its private sector consists of businesses with fewer than 20 employees. (See http://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Across-Europe/Trade-Unions2, http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/labour_relations/info_analysis/union_membership/2010/pdf/unionmembership2010.pdf and http://www.fedee.com/tradeunions.html)

Despite the recent general strikes in Spain and France , only a small percentage of their workforce that is unionized. The US at 11.9% falls between Spain , at 16% and France, at 8%. European Union analysts attribute labor's organizing success in Spain and France (and Greece ) to the high public regard unions enjoy in both countries. The result is that most non-union workers will strike in solidarity with a general strike called by major unions.

Following the Egyptian Example

So long as American workers continue to follow the dictates of the Taft Hartley Act, I see no hope of building a union movement strong enough to resist Wall Street and government efforts to reduce the US to a third world sweatshop. Trade unionists in New Zealand find it laughable that US workers have to get permission from the federal government (the National Labor Relations Board) to form a union. In their view that's hardly different from having a government-run union, like they do in Egypt and other Middle East countries. They believe, as I do, that American workers are doomed if they continue to rely on the strategy of begging the trade union bureaucracy to beg the Democratic Party to repeal the Taft Hartley Act.

The failure of the Obama administration and Congress to prevent Republican states from stripping workers of all union protections -- as well as their threats to repeal Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- leave American workers no choice but to follow the example of their Egyptian brothers and form their own (illegal) unions. Relying on a pro-corporate federal government to address labor rights makes no sense. It's time for the rank and file to reclaim the freedom to have mass pickets, slowdowns and wildcat and sit down strikes in response to attacks on workers' rights. Historically these are the only tactics that have really worked.

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