u Photo: Sam Pizzigati
ALL-CHANGE: The General Motors plant at Siloa, where workers finally had the opportunity to pick a union of their own choice.
S am P izzigati
Mexican workers learn strength of unity GM workers are now feeling their own power after years of living in fear
T
he US labour movement, after a depressing January, needed some encouraging news. That encouraging news has just come – from Mexico. What put the damper on January? The US Department of Labor released its annual figures on “union density”, the share of America’s labour force that carries union cards. Activists across the country were expecting to see the new figures show a healthy uptick in labour’s overall ranks. The past year had, after all, been remarkably upbeat, with a new wave of union organising taking shape – and making headlines – in giant nonunion empires like Ama-
zon and Starbucks. But new figures from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed no increase in union density at all. Instead, the union share of the nation’s private-sector workforce actually dropped, down to 6.1 percent, the lowest level in over a century. Some context: Back in the 1950s and 1960s, a full third of US private-sector workers carried union cards. All Americans, then and now, have ample reason to care about the Labor Department’s annual union density stats. No numbers may simply have more impact on the distribution of America’s income and wealth. In the 1960s, in a highly unionised
America, top corporate execs averaged only just over 20 times more in annual compensation than average US workers. And the take-home of those execs faced tax rates that ranged as high as 91 percent. That one-two punch of high unionisation rates and high tax rates on high incomes kept the United States a nation where the rich didn’t always win. But that state of affairs didn’t last. By the late 1970s, America’s mid-century equality had begun to unravel. Since 1978, the Economic Policy Institute reported late last year, typical US worker pay has increased only 18 percent after taking inflation into account. Over that same span, major US corporate CEOs have seen their ColdType | March 2022 | www.coldtype.net
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