Turning Points in U.S. Labor History, Political Culture, and the Current Upsurge in Labor Militancy

Abstract

I consider the current labor upsurge in context of prior pro-labor transformative turning points in U.S. labor history, all of which involved major changes in political culture. My assessment of key conditions in the current moment centers on three important conditions for changing political culture: (a) anti-racist civil rights-based social movement unionism; (b) changing discourse about the role of unions in political economy; (c) the weak position of labor law. Taken in combination, labor in the current conjuncture faces a steep, but not impossible, uphill climb.