Inequality and solidarity: why a resurgent labor movement is closer than you think.

• Author: Kahlenberg, Richard D.
• Position: The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker - State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence - Book review

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

By Steven Greenhouse

Knopf, 384 pp.

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State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence

By Philip M. Dine

McGraw-Hill, 276 pp.

For four decades, American liberalism has had an ambivalent relationship with organized labor. On the one hand, liberals and Democrats rely on unions to help fund campaigns, man phone banks, and deliver their members' votes each election cycle. Moreover, most liberals are in broad agreement with labor's core agenda: better health care, a more generous minimum wage, more funding for public schools, and the like. On the other hand, as liberalism and the Democratic Party have gone increasingly upscale, they have evidenced a palpable disdain for unions and union leaders, who are often seen as narrow, selfish, grubby, and, sometimes, corrupt. Many liberals work in professions where they don't personally see the need to unionize. And as consumers, they are beneficiaries of globalization and worry that unions will slow the positive and inevitable trend toward trade liberalization.

No liberal institution better encapsulates this tension than the New York Times. With its highly educated, upper-middle-class readership, the Times editorial page generally endorses labor's public policy goals but evinces no real understanding of the labor movement, especially as compared to, say, the civil rights movement. The most recent Labor Day editorial, for instance, described the holiday as marking no more than the changing of the seasons: "If you get choked up on Labor Day, you've probably just been eating too fast," its writer advised.

I've recently written a biography of Albert Shanker, the legendary teachers union leader. When I speak to union audiences, individuals of all races and backgrounds ask me to sign their copy of my book "in solidarity"; for these people, Labor Day has enormous emotional resonance, something the Times editorial page doesn't seem to comprehend. (It's hard to imagine the Times writing so flippantly about Martin Luther King Day.) Labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan summarizes the diverging sensibilities of unions and the wider liberal movement by observing that when he meets other liberal activists, they "understand each other's causes, but have no sense of yours."

Perhaps this should come as no surprise. After all, American labor is in shambles. Union density has declined to 7.4 percent of the private sector, the lowest level since 1901. As Geoghegan notes, radio networks once broadcast the speeches of union leaders live, and bookstores devoted entire sections to the subject of labor. Today, the preferred topics are self-help and sex.

But the era of the weak union may be passing. Inequality has reached startling dimensions, and there is grumbling from the general public about CEO pay, which is now 369 times that of the average worker, up from thirty-six times as much in 1976. Corporate profits have been surging, but employees have not been sharing in the spoils: since 2001, productivity has increased nearly 20 percent, while average wages are up less than 2 percent. Such pervasive inequities have made workers more receptive to unions than they've been in decades. A 2007 poll found that 53 percent of...