This report established the unremarkable finding that unions at sufficient density raise members pay relative to the non-unionized segment, reduce the possibility of extreme pay differentials, increase the rate of health insurance and pension coverage, and tend to increase political participation. Of course, the task force uniformly agreed that unions need to rebound to continue to receive these benefits. One of several side recommendations calls for unions to strategically organize through targeting organizable sectors, to consolidate unions, to promote unions as assets in high-performance workplaces, to ally with their global counterparts, and to raise labor's voice on behalf of all working people. The task force fails to mention that the labor movement has considerably stepped up these efforts over the last few years with quite modest results.
Other members focused on labor laws and their interpretation by courts and the National Labor Relations Board as a major hurdle for unions to overcome to organize new members. The basic labor law of the land permits employers to dominate the process by which workers supposedly are free to choose who will represent them. Under the current legal regime, employers can use both coercive and illegal tactics to prevent the establishment of a union with little concern for punitive measures being taken against them.
But there is no chance that the legal situation will change for unions and working people unless a wholesale transformation occurs in public thinking; there simply will be no political mandate. A task force member, Nelson Lichtenstein, declares that "trade unions will need to engineer a political and cultural breakthrough that sways the hearts and minds of millions and millions of people who today see the unions as irrelevant, or even hostile, to their interests." A "classwide insurgency" will be required.
Lichtenstein also presents a background article on the labor movement since the 1930s. It is clear that through the vehicle of labor unions a sizeable portion of the working class gained substantial economic and political citizenship. But equally clear is the fact that the labor movement facilitated those gains at considerable costs. Labor unions were expected to police their memberships in accordance with the provisions of collective bargaining agreements and to eliminate class-based militancy from within their ranks. In an era of an alleged labor-management accord, the labor movement lost the social and political power necessary to respond to the various forces that became seriously arrayed against them by the mid-1970s. The slide has been continuous since that time. A more complete picture of the slide of unions is available in Lichtenstein's recent book: "State of the Union."
This task force as a whole was unwilling to squarely admit that class warfare has occurred in the U.S. over the last thirty years and that the working class lost and is losing. Organizing a few pockets of workers here and there, coordinating with some foreign labor bodies, and running slick political ads do not constitute a labor turnaround. The working class must adopt stances of militancy, insurgency, and participatory democracy to even think about turning around their situation. But beyond isolated cases of such resolve, there is virtually no evidence that a significant revival is even remotely imminent.