O Labor, Where Art Thou?

My Labor Day post suggested that organized labor should receive a boost from the Great Recession. There is, of course, a quite legitimate contrary view. For those employers to whom I may have given heartburn on Labor Day, here’s your antacid.

In a generally-cynical-about-everything op-ed piece in Slate, Daniel Gross turns his guns on the growth of corporate profits despite the recession and on what he calls “CEO crybabies” who feel put upon by new government regulations. He does, however, give CEOs full credit for the turnaround in corporate profits. “They slashed costs, restructured, made cold and swift decisions, and relentlessly pursued productivity and efficiency . . . . They’ve also continued — and intensified — their long-standing practice of beating the living daylights out of America’s labor force.”

He then takes aim at labor unions. They’ve never been weaker. They continue their long decline. “Disorganized labor” has been unable to take advantage of a continuing recession and a Democrat-controlled White House and Congress.

Of more significance perhaps is an article in the New York Times, reporting the resignation of the highest-ranking woman in the history of America’s labor movement. Anna Burger has been chairwoman of Change to Win, a federation representing five million union members, and secretary-treasurer of the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

She’s not revered by all labor unions, however. She’s blamed for the SEIU’s split from the AFL-CIO in 2005, which weakened organized labor, according to her detractors. Her self-promotion has supposedly added to her divisiveness.

But the resignation of someone as prominent as Anna Burger because of open frustration with shrinking union membership at a time when workers should be joining unions in droves and when it appears that union efforts to elect a labor-friendly President and Congress were for naught is telling. In short, organized labor is in disarray.