1. This is 2011, not 1911. Even without labor unions, society has evolved to the point where they wouldn't tolerate things such as unsafe working conditions, child labor, paying below a certain wage, etc.
2. You mention how labor unions keep wages high, and yet nowadays because we expect wages to be high, the American workforce has become uncompetitive in a globalized economy. Yeah, unions will keep wages higher, but in return corporations are just going to move those jobs to China, South Asia, and Latin America where workers there will work for lower pay. That is the biggest setback for unions nowadays, not because they went anti-Communist.
3. Unions are on the defensive now because of things such as high labor costs essentially causing the downfall of General Motors and Chrysler to the point where they were nationalized (and the government gave them shares in the new companies that succeeded them). And you have teachers unions protecting horrible teachers (Kel can go in full detail with that one) and being stubborn to reform in states like New York and New Jersey.
4. The media hasn't blamed unions for the economic downfall. They rightfully put a lot of the blame on the Wall Street fat cats that received trillions of dollars in bailout money. The American public hates them and deservedly so. Unions overall haven't been criminalized by the public. The general public doesn't have problems with the basic concepts of unions. The public has problems when public sector unions refuse to accept just as much hardship as the general public is while the general public are the ones paying their salaries and benefits, unions protecting incompetent workers, and of course unions such as the UAW causing and benefiting the auto industry's downfall.
1. Depends what you mean by "society". Society is divided into classes. In the United States today you primarily have the working class, the small business owners, and the corporate elite - bankers, CEOs, politicians (Democrats and Republicans), and the leaders of what Chris Hedges called the "liberal class" - i.e. the heads of those liberal institutions such as the trade unions, the Democratic Party, the Church, the media and universities that have abdicated any kind of progressive leadership in favour of submission to and acquiescence in corporate power. All members of this elite are willing to make painful "sacrifices" on behalf of the workers they sometimes claim to represent (in this case, the union leadership). The only reason things came to a head in Wisconsin recently is because Gov. Walker threatened the right of collective bargaining, etc. which would have directly harmed the union leaders and their privileges. Otherwise, none of them had a problem with cutting wages of the rank-and-file during episodes like the auto bailout.
So right now we see the media, the union leadership, the corporate elite in general all willing to go along with the calls for austerity and cuts. The only counterforce are the workers themselves. I know you think these kinds of struggles are a thing of the past. But the truth is, everything that workers take for granted today - the eight-hour work day, no child labour, the minimum wage - they had to fight for. Big Business vehemently opposed the New Deal and, after the postwar Keynesian consensus evaporated in the 1970s, they were able to begin rolling back all the gains that workers had made, starting with Reagan's election. The U.S. political spectrum has moved ever rightward since then, and what were once seen as extreme right positions are now deemed "centrist". With Obama and the Republicans spearheading the latest assaults on workers, we're seeing rollbacks on everything, up to and including
child labor laws.
2. This is the end result of globalization. By trying to bring U.S. wages down to a level comparable to their Asian counterparts, you're really encouraging a race to the bottom. The question is, why are wages on a world scale, in general, going down and not up? When the means of production are in private hands and everything is based on the generation of profit for a few people at the top, those owners will always want wages to be as low as possible in order to create more profit for themselves. If the workers themselves owned the means of production and produced goods for the benefit of society as a whole, you could enable a general rise in wages for the producers, i.e. the working class.
3. High labor costs didn't cause the downfall of the Big Three automakers; it was lousy management. While well-compensated unionized workers in Japan and Germany produced popular, fuel-efficient cars, the leadership of GM, Chrysler and Ford pushed gas-guzzling behemoths and failed to adapt. Their ineptitude led to the failure of their companies and the need for government bailouts (along with the fact that their financial divisions were heavily invested in the stock market and suffered from the general economic collapse in 2008).
The workers produced the cars, but they only made the cars the bosses told them to make. Who do you think knows more about cars, a worker on the floor at a GM plant or an Ivy League MBA who's never worked a job where he didn't wear a white collar? Put design in the hands of the people who actually make cars and I'm certain you'd get better results.
The teachers unions have been a scapegoat for a while. It's pretty ridiculous that in the era of the bailout, when billionaires swelled with the profit of bonuses paid by taxpayers can lecture workers on the need to make sacrifices and tighten their belts, we see "bad teachers" being targeted for their supposedly excessive wages and benefits. Because we all know your average first grade teacher only got in it for the big bucks, right? Please.
4. The media has moved on from the Wall Street fat cats. The dominant narrative since the initial shock of the economic collapse and the bailouts has turned to demonizing unions and powerless targets like the poor, immigrants, gays, etc. Obviously this is more true for right-wing media like Fox News, but the rest of the corporate media - until the tumultuous events in the Middle East and Japan forced them to cover real news - generally follows their lead (this includes "liberal" outlets like MSNBC...come on, what would all these commentators talk about if they weren't *****ing about Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, etc.?).
The idea of pitting private sector workers against public sector workers is a divide-and-conquer strategy. There's a joke that's been making the rounds lately that I think explains the actual situation pretty well:
A union worker, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table.
In the middle of the table there is a plate with a dozen cookies on it.
The CEO reaches across the table, takes 11 cookies, looks at the Tea
Partier and says:
"Look out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie."
