Labor: Flat on its Back?

Paper Summary:

This paper examines and reviews the book "Which Side are you on? Trying to be for Labor When it's Flat on its Back," by Thoma Geoghegan, a labor lawyer who has a dim view of the modern American labor movement. The paper discusses Geoghegan's beliefs that the labor movement is past its prime and usefulness and will eventually dwindle away, dying a lingering and painful death and leaving millions of Americans unrepresented in its wake. The paper shows, through reference to statistics, that Geoghegan's predictions from 1991 seem to coming true, with trade union membership figures dwindling along with their power. The author of the paper presents reasons why he agrees with Geoghegan's thesis.

From the Paper:

"To prove his point, the author follows the descent and crash of the steel industry, and shows how it fell from one of the largest organized employers in the nation to a small, unorganized industry. "Oh, we would still have a steel industry, and some of it would be new: small, low-wage 'mini-mills,' mostly non-union, mostly in the South" (Geoghegan 85). The steel industry never regained its heyday, and many other organized industries have followed suit.
Geoghegan comes across as jaded and tired in his tirade about the unions, and after reading this book, it is difficult not to see why. His career as a labor lawyer has shown him all sides of the unions, from their heydays to their rapid declines. He has defended union member pensions that were wiped out by crafty corporations like International Harvester, who sold a steel mill to a small operator who went bankrupt, and took the member's pensions with them. The union members finally got a settlement from Harvester that was a mere pittance to what their pensions would have been. It was a sad case for the unions, and points to the unions demise, they simply do not wield the power they once did."

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