We do have a dog in the Michigan fight

The union movement built prosperity and solidarity

Membership in organized labor has been declining for years. The largest industrial unions have gone the way of rustbelt industries, declining and nearly disappearing. The public sector unions that held the line through the last part of the 20th century have suffered significant losses during the Great Recession and its aftermath, and teachers' unions in particular have suffered from right-wing attacks that have accompanied the education reform movement. The passage this week of a right-to-work law in Michigan may be part of the continuing decline, but ought to raise new alarms on the American left.

There are plenty of critiques of unions in the mainstream press, so none of those will be linked here. Readers can hunt them down easily enough. Yes, union leaders are sometimes too cozy with power, especially in states and cities. And, yes, union leaders sometimes get too comfortable with the perks of their own power.

But so do progressives who get elected to public office or settle into tenure track positions at major universities. But they do not stop being politically progressive simply because they compromise or, even, overindulge. Neither do unions. The point is that regardless of what unions and their leaderships sometimes do to deserve criticism, progressives need to recognize that to err in some of these familiar ways is both all too human and ought not be an obstacle to progressive solidarity with labor.

I've written before about the need for the left to completely embrace the union movement; twice when I was working for In These Times ("Labor's Future is Ours" and "When Mainstream Media Tells Labor Stories"), and several posts on this blog (many of which can be found here).

Now, Harold Meyerson, one of the few mainstream media columnists with a true appreciation of the value of organized labor, has written an instructive column in the Washington Post, "The Lansing-Beijing connection," on how right-to-work laws undermine prosperity and increase inequality. "[A]n exhaustive study by economist Lonnie K. Stevens of Hofstra University found states that have enacted such laws reported no increase in business start-ups or rates of employment. Wages and personal income are lower in those states...Stevens concluded, though proprietors' incomes are higher," Meyerson wrote.

Everyone who embraces the goals of reducing income and wealth inequality in the United States and globally ought to be embracing labor organizing, as well. Jobs with Justice, a national organization founded to be a bridge between non-union progressives and the labor movement, is one way to get moving on this. Also, check out labor writer David Moberg's interview with Larry Cohen, organizing director for the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and a founder of Jobs with Justice.