Lawrence Richards (2) (1959–)

Union-Free America: Workers and Anti-union Culture by Lawrence Richards answers a question that has puzzled me for years. Why are the very workers that would benefit most from unions be so anti-union? To answer that question Dr. Richards first looks at the popular image Americans have held of unions thru the twentieth century and how that image evolved. Unions were believed to be part of the Red Menace in the 1920s. During the Great Depression that image changed to unions being protectors of the downtrodden, saving the nation from greedy corporations. By the 1980s that view had devolved in the public’s eye, unions were then seen as corrupt, greedy, special interests causing the inflation that was ruining the nation.
After establishing the popular opinion of unions Richards looks at how the unions react to that perception by looking at three different types of organizing activities, a blue-collar mill in the rural South, white-collar office workers in New York, and professionals, teachers, deciding between two professional organizations, one affiliated with the AFL-CIO and one that was not.
I found the book to be very well written and as easy to read as you could expect from an academic work. I appreciated Richards’s use of two popular comic strips to illustrate public opinion. What better evidence of popular opinion is there than a punch line that dependent on the audience’s shared beliefs?… (mehr)