Organized Labor: An Engine of Democracy

Photo credit to The Guardian

On this Labor Day weekend we remember the successes organized labor has won for the working class not just in the United States but all over the world.  Besides fighting for a working wage, usable life benefits such as health insurance, a reasonable work week, and safe working conditions the organized labor movement is a major player in maintaining the health of and establishing democracy.

Since the 1980s "big money" and the corporate empire has struck back against organized labor using various means and incentives to cause a significant decline in union membership.  The decline of organized labor has led to a decline in wages keeping up with cost-of-living inflation and a rise in job insecurity.  I argue that the decline of organized labor around the world marched, hand-in-hand, with a similar decline in the practice of democracy, the existence of a middle class, and the rise of corporate oligarchy and authoritarianism.

Among the great battles of organized labor, fighting for and protecting worker rights and working conditions between 1880 and 1980, is the earth-shaking rise of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland that, in a decade, despite severe repression and imposition of martial law, brought down the authoritarian military government.  The Solidarity labor movement played a huge part in the train of events establishing democracy throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990s.