The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor Highlight

In order to grow (or even maintain) labor power in America, the scale of new union organizing must increase dramatically. A consequence of giving people unions is that those people have power they did not have before. That power exists in their own workplace, but it also exists inside of the labor movement itself. And to the extent that the labor movement, like all institutions, naturally produces in its leaders a sense of inertia borne from the realization that an influx of new voices clamoring for new stuff could be a big pain in the ass, there exists in many large unions an unspoken but very real distaste for the idea of flinging open the doors to a large number of new members. This institutional intransigence, combined with an all-out assault on the very existence of unions from the political right wing, is what has led to the long, slow, steady decline of union density and all that has come with it.