Labor’s “Vatican II”

Without fanfare, in the recession summer of 1982, the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO appointed a special committee to “review and evaluate changes that are taking place in America in the labor force, occupations, industries, and technology.” Who would have suspected that this posse, with the academic sounding name of the Committee on the Evolution of Work, would be the beginning of American labor’s Vatican II? But it was, and the potential impact on U.S. unionism is as pro...