What factors caused the decline of workers unions
In: 3
Politics, technology, globalization, and culture.
From a cultural point of view, unions were often shown in a negative light in pop culture. Media is controlled by large corporations, and so unions were often portrayed on television or in print as lazy hinderances to the Ayn Rand style entrepreneurs. It didn’t help matters that by the 1980s unions were increasingly associated with the mafia, at least in media portrayals.
As technology progressed, many of the traditionally union industries became obsolete, and new industries popped up. These new industries, such as programmers, developers, software engineers, etc did not emerge unionized, and never really made serious efforts to do so. Additionally, more modern gig economy jobs, such as Uber driver, Door Dasher, MLMs and even OnlyFans are increasingly numerous options that would be incredibly difficult to unionize.
With the advent of the internet, there was also a major globalization push in the United States. Many of the manufacturing jobs that were unionized, were outsourced to foreign countries. The stronger a union was, the more likely to be moved that job became. This has also resulted in scarcity of jobs within the United States, which always weakens unions bargaining power and helps corporations.
Politically, both major political parties in the US are beholden to corporate interests, though arguably to different degrees. This has resulted in laws being passed that weaken union power, or allow companies to use different tactics to get around unions. The power of the government to mediate disputes, once a union weapon, has often been used to break strikes instead, with the largest example being Ronald Reagan’s breakup of the Air Traffic Control union (ironic, since he’s the only President who was ever head of a labor union himself, SAG).
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