The New York Times' Steven Greenhouse has spent nearly two decades as a reporter covering labor in America. This week, he announced he's taking a buyout. Excerpts from a Gawker interview:
Steven Greenhouse - Nationwide, the number of full-time reporters who covered labor fell sharply over the past 7 to 10 years as newspapers downsized. But labor coverage – by full-time and part-time reporters – has rebounded recently, at least somewhat, in response to the battles over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio, the right-to-work fight in Michigan in response to the rise of the fast-food workers' movement as well as growing concerns about income inequality and declining living standards for the nation's middle class....
In the 19 years since I began covering labor (in late 1995), the balance of power between corporations and labor has shifted strongly in favor of corporations as the percentage of worker in unions has continued to drop. Labor has also been weakened by increased globalization – a force that has pressured many American corporations to press harder to cut costs. In the view of many economists, organized labor's declining leverage has contributed to income inequality, stagnating wages and worse pension and health coverage for millions of workers...
I first began covering labor in late 1995 just as the A.F.L.-C.I.O. elected a new president, John J. Sweeney, who promised to do his all to bring a resurgence of labor. But despite Sweeney's best efforts – to spur more organizing, to rally immigrant workers, to ally labor with faith groups – Sweeney and his allies failed to bring about any lasting, substantial resurgence.
Among workers nationwide, there is growing upset about stagnant wages and worsening conditions, but unions are not doing much organizing. And when unions try organizing workers, most companies mount aggressive, sophisticated campaigns, often bringing in expensive experts, to combat and defeat unionization. So I don't see much near-term growth for unions – unless organized labor somehow achieves some breakthroughs in overcoming employer resistance or in inspiring workers to flock to labor's banner notwithstanding the pressures they face from their companies to shun unions.
Nowadays a lot of the action we're seeing to help workers is in non-union worker advocacy groups. These innovative groups are making waves in numerous states. Here I think of Domestic Workers United, Make the Road in New York, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Workers Defense Project in Texas. These groups are not as powerful as traditional labor unions, but they have made some substantial gains.
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