"State of the Unions: A Century of American Labor" by Nelson Lichtenstein. 2002. 336 pages. $ 29.95.

Noted labor historian Lichtenstein examines the key question of what has happened to our understanding of the vital importance of labor to social justice.

For most of the 20th century, "the labor question" - as it was put in the early 1900s - was widely seen as a burning issue. This persisted through the uprisings of workers and the unemployed and government encouragement for unions in the 1930s, through the post World War II period and into the 1950s.

Organized labor continued to grow into the '50s and started its long decline as a proportion of the work force in the 60s. Lichtenstein sees the seeds of defeat planted in the employer campaign to counter labor solidarity that passed the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

In the years that followed, unions maintained their strength but gradually divorced themselves from the wider movement for social change. Many gained impressive contractual health, welfare and pension benefits - which cooled their passion for national gains for everyone.

Only the most progressive unions participated in the civil rights movement - including AFSCME, DC 37's national union - while some defended racist hiring practices.

The public began to see unions as a special interest and with the Teamster investigations of the late '50s, a sometimes corrupt one. By the time Ronald Reagan broke the Air Controllers strike in the early 1980s, the unions were isolated, setting the stage for a new onslaught in which Southern tactics of union busting were employed nationwide.

Today, unions make up less than 10 percent of the non-public sector work force - down from one-third in the 1950s. It's no accident that real wages have stagnated and income equality has grown during this same period.

Lichtenstein assesses the new leadership of the AFL-CIO, which has fought to reverse the long historical trend he has described. They have reached out to the civil rights, immigrant, student, academic, left and other formerly alienated communities. They have nurtured new organizing and established union rights among today's civil rights struggles. These efforts have gone a long way to change labor's image and even to halt its decline, but under the Clinton and Bush administrations the needed growth spurt has not materialized.

Lichtenstein does not have all the answers, but he has certainly posed the right questions to advance the discussion of the state of the unions and what has to be done.

— Ken Nash
DC 37 Ed. Fund Library, Room 211