Michael McCord, business editor of the Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald, offers an interesting column describing the failure of organized labor to keep up with the “anti-union public relations generated by large corporations such as Wal-Mart.”
Writes McCord:
There’s no doubt organized labor has seen its numbers evaporate during the past three decades as old industries disappear or transform themselves into multinational corporations searching high and low for the cheapest labor base.
The collective nature of unions has always gone against the even stronger collective mythology of American individualism. The dream of an Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story isn’t accompanied by a union theme song. But if not for organized labor … neither workplace safety regulations nor minimum-wage laws would exist.
Unfortunately, the problems of unions in today’s economy go well beyond poor PR. In the absence of a persuasive argument for how organized labor can compete in a global free-market system, the influence of unions will continue to decline.
