Labor and the Bush Administration: “down so long, seem like up to me”

Abstract

For a century, scholars and labor movement activists have debated the question of “American Exceptionalism,” or the distinctive nature of the labor movement in the United States. The weakness of American unions, especially their lack of members, has been attributed to distinctive features of American society, notably the hostility of the American government towards unions. Those who accept this Exceptionalist view have urged unions in the United States to become more active politically in order to strengthen their position. Since 1980, unions have followed this advice and have doubled their political spending. Most of the unions’ political activity and spending has been in support of candidates of the Democratic Party; but unions have received little in return from Democrats, even during the Clinton Administration. Indeed, during the administration of George W. Bush, union membership fell at almost exactly the same rate as before notwithstanding the Bush Administration’s open hostility towards unions and its attempt to use state power against unions in both the private and public sectors. In fact, over the last decades, we may be seeing the end of Exceptionalism. Since 1990, union membership decline has been slower in the United States than in most other OECD member states, despite a relatively hostile political and legal regime. Combined with the negligible effect of the Bush Administration on American unions, this suggests that union weakness in the United States is not due to exceptional features of the United States but to characteristics it shares with other countries. Throughout the affluent world, the idea of the labor movement has lost its tie to the broader democratic aspirations. In America and elsewhere, union revival depends on more than some incremental legal changes or political victories. It depends on the revival of the formative ideals of the labor movement, equality, fraternity, and the struggle for free and democratic work.