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By 'trifecta' I mean control of the White House, US House, and US Senate. Democrats had it after winning in 2006, and the GOP had it after 2016.
The bulk of federal law governing unions goes back to FDR--the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, or Wagner Act of 1935) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA of 1938). There was also Taft Hartley passed in 1947, which attempted to restrict union power by amending the Wagner Act. It passed over Pres. Truman's veto.
Federal labor law to me is a huge mess.
I am pro-union, but private sector only. Private sector unions are now down to 6.4%. The number in the 1950s was 35%. Yet Democrats did NOTHING to address this decline. Instead we got phony initiatives such as the minimum wage. Sweden has no minimum wage, but most workers are union, which means they get a decent wage via contract negotiations. Min. wage is a sham.
OTOH, public sector unionization has skyrocketed from near zero to about 33%. This also is a huge problem. It amounts to a kick-back scheme that would be unethical and illegal in other contexts. It is why FDR opposed public sector unionization.
Yet the GOP did nothing when they had total control. They did indirectly, by putting Gorsuch on the SCOTUS and thus getting the Janus ruling. But whether the impact of that will be significant on public sector unions remains to be seen. Janus made joining a public sector union voluntary.
The obvious answer to why the two parties didn't act is that they like things they way they are. While pundits shriek about 'polarization,' I see the two parties working hand in hand in DC. What we have in DC is a duopoly. The parties compete on meaningless tripe, and work together on things that matter.
There was a huge push for card check in 2009-2011. It failed because moderate Dems recoiled from making union ballots public and the obvious strongarm tactics that would follow.
I think the Republicans did not act on unions because private unions have been vanquished and the Supreme Court and soon appellate courts will chip away at public unions. Rome wasn't built in a day and frankly the best strategy to deal with public unions is to introduce a generational imbalance within the union by slowly crimping benefits. Due the unions' own seniority policies the shrinking pot will go to the seniors and the juniors will be less resentful of their shrinking lot because they never had it better. However the disparity will discredit union leadership and make younger workers question the value of membership.
Attacking public unions head on is kicking a hornet's nest, as we saw in Wisconsin, so it's better to wage a war of attrition and let the to-the-ramparts crowd age out. Besides, the Wisconsin reforms showed how effective making fair share fees optional was (classic collective action problem) and Janus took that national by judicial fiat.
By 'trifecta' I mean control of the White House, US House, and US Senate. Democrats had it after winning in 2006, and the GOP had it after 2016.
The bulk of federal law governing unions goes back to FDR--the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, or Wagner Act of 1935) and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA of 1938). There was also Taft Hartley passed in 1947, which attempted to restrict union power by amending the Wagner Act. It passed over Pres. Truman's veto.
Federal labor law to me is a huge mess.
I am pro-union, but private sector only. Private sector unions are now down to 6.4%. The number in the 1950s was 35%. Yet Democrats did NOTHING to address this decline. Instead we got phony initiatives such as the minimum wage. Sweden has no minimum wage, but most workers are union, which means they get a decent wage via contract negotiations. Min. wage is a sham.
OTOH, public sector unionization has skyrocketed from near zero to about 33%. This also is a huge problem. It amounts to a kick-back scheme that would be unethical and illegal in other contexts. It is why FDR opposed public sector unionization.
Yet the GOP did nothing when they had total control. They did indirectly, by putting Gorsuch on the SCOTUS and thus getting the Janus ruling. But whether the impact of that will be significant on public sector unions remains to be seen. Janus made joining a public sector union voluntary.
The obvious answer to why the two parties didn't act is that they like things they way they are. While pundits shriek about 'polarization,' I see the two parties working hand in hand in DC. What we have in DC is a duopoly. The parties compete on meaningless tripe, and work together on things that matter.
Those of us in the middle class have lost a great deal of ground because of two factors. Those are globalization and a concerted effort to destroy the union movement. Public sector unions are really the last vestige of the union movement that is hanging tough. I support them because the Koch brothers are trying to destroy them, and the Koch brothers represent the billionaire class.
The Democratic trifecta that existed between 09 and 10 was a disappointment. Obama was calling the shots, and the only thing that he wanted to push through was his brand of health insurance. I don't think that Obama came on board with a well thought out agenda. He may have also got thrown off by the greatest challenge to our economy since the Depression. On second thought, he may have had a good many progressive ideas, but may have gotten resistance from his own party.
You don't mention anything about over time pay but you do mention the minimum wage. You mention that Sweden doesn't have a minimum wage because they have strong unions. We no longer do. A minimum wage is necessary in the United States because that is the only way to implement "trickle down". Trickle down is a term that the republicans like to taunt us with because without legislation, it doesn't exist. I also support a more aggressive overtime threshold. Trump just raised the minimum acceptable level at which a person could be denied overtime pay to $35,000 a year. That's still only $16.83 an hour based on a 40 hour week.
An important reason why i consider the Dems the lesser of two evils but still evil, is that the Dems. don't actively vote anti-labor. They just play dead when the republicans pull the rug out from under labor's feet. There is a book named "Sold Out" written by Malkin and Miano. It mentioned that Hillary was so on board with offshoring that she joked that she could be elected the Senator from the Punjab.
There isn't much to unionize anymore. Everything has been offshored
Manufacturing has been off-shored, but there are still millions of private sector jobs that could be unionized. I remember reading about the landmark SCOTUS 'Weingarten' case from 1975, which established the right to representation (in the issuance of reprimands & terminations) for union workers. The case involved a union lunch counter worker, not an auto worker, steel worker, or teamster. I doubt there is even one unionized lunch counter in the US today.
I once had a conversation with a union organizer and asked him why they didn't try to unionize, say, Amazon. He said that due to the laws in place, it is very easy for the company to block unionization efforts, and tough for the union to overcome. This could have been addressed by Obama and Democrats in 2009-2011, but it wasn't.
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