The Unions Try Self-Criticism

The American labor movement is being battered by tides of change. Union membership as a proportion of the total work force is down; relative wages are declining; hard-won work rules are being surrendered; and employers are sowing the seeds of future discord by insisting on two-tier wage scales.

Labor lobbyists can’t get their full-employment economic program on the congressional agenda; labor’s candidate Walter Mondale abandoned the AFL–CIO’s industrial policy; and ...