A very interesting piece with some odd observations. Blaming conservative governments for the weakening of wage bargaining leverage of organised labour is missing the point. The unions in the 1970s at least in the UK and to my knowledge in the USA were aggressively anti-prosperity and abused their power through the increasingly supine political parties that they were bankrolling. Their dreadful influence on the business climate and their overall antagonistic and highly selective advocacy was screaming for corrective action and it was - at least in the UK - the TUCs overplaying its hand in the 78/79 Winter of Discontent that finally pushed Britain into political counter-action and brought Margaret to power. A combination of advances in industrial techology and most importantly allowing China to dump 800 million jobs on the world labour market at 1/30th of the price of western labour did the rest.
A very interesting piece with some odd observations. Blaming conservative governments for the weakening of wage bargaining leverage of organised labour is missing the point. The unions in the 1970s at least in the UK and to my knowledge in the USA were aggressively anti-prosperity and abused their power through the increasingly supine political parties that they were bankrolling. Their dreadful influence on the business climate and their overall antagonistic and highly selective advocacy was screaming for corrective action and it was - at least in the UK - the TUCs overplaying its hand in the 78/79 Winter of Discontent that finally pushed Britain into political counter-action and brought Margaret to power. A combination of advances in industrial techology and most importantly allowing China to dump 800 million jobs on the world labour market at 1/30th of the price of western labour did the rest.