“I see no reason to believe that American trade unionism will so revolutionize itself as to become a more potent social influence in the next decade,” wrote nationally known economist George Barnett. While many agreed with him in 1932, the decade that followed saw the greatest upsurge in union organizing.

During the Great Depression, workers flocked to unions where they existed and formed many new ones. They battled not only the employers and private armies of goons, but frequently the local and state police. They developed new strategies like the general strike and sit-down strikes, and built solidarity among black and white workers, workers of different employers, the unemployed and community organizations. The rapid growth and militancy faded after the strike wave of the late 1940s, but unions as institutions seemed secure for decades after that and made great advances.

The 1930s are only one of the turning points in labor history explored by Steve Babson in “The Unfinished Struggle: Turning Points in American Labor.” The brevity of this history of the U.S. labor movement makes the book accessible to a wide audience and accentuates the major trends. Babson starts with the 1877 general strike, the growth through the end of World War I and the decline of the 1920s.

While the militancy of the union movement declined beginning in the 1950s, growth in the public sector somewhat made up for weakness in industry. But when the unions were tested in 1981 by Ronald Reagan’s busting of the Patco air controllers’ strike, they failed to respond with a kind of solidarity and militancy that would meet that challenge. This opened the door to decades of union busting.

Babson brings us up to the latter part of the Clinton Administration and the change in leadership of the AFL-CIO, which provided some hope for a labor movement still struggling to regain momentum for an upturn after years of decline.

Union membership is at its lowest point since the late 1920s. And George W. Bush has given us war abroad, nationwide budget cuts and layoffs, and union busting is again coming out of the White House.

The future of labor has not looked so dim since the Depression, when George Barnett could see no hope for the union movement. But renewed union activism and organizing quickly proved him wrong.

— Ken Nash
Ed Fund Library, Room 211