Labor Unions: American Tradition or Outmoded System?
Thomas Sugrue discusses planned legislation to strip collective bargaining and other rights from union workers.
Blake ColeLabor unions, since before the New Deal, have been held up as a quintessential American right. They seek to protect wages, benefits and other workers' rights, especially in the public sector and at big corporations. But when recession hits and unemployment booms, are trade unions disproportionately generous in the midst of such public hardship—and is providing wide-ranging benefits to union workers fair, seeing as how many other Americans remain uninsured? Currently a topic of hot political debate, union power has been the target of legislation targeting collective bargaining rights, among others. Thomas Sugrue, David Boies Professor of History and Sociology, is an expert in twentieth-century American politics, urban history, civil rights, and race. He recently authored Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race and Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. Here, he provides a history of labor unions and his own take on the various arguments boiling over on the national stage.
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Thomas J. Sugrue David Boies Professor of History and Sociology |
| 1. How does collective bargaining impact your average laborer? |
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| 2. Those opposed to collective bargaining often cite exorbitant or unnecessary union benefits. How do these benefits figure into the debate? |
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| 3. Wisconsin enacted the nation's first unemployment compensation law, and is seen as a trailblazer in regards to workers' rights. But it is now at the center of anti-union legislature and the resulting protests. Does this legislative history further polarize the two sides? |
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| 4. Indiana Democratic lawmakers have sequestered themselves and refused to vote on the stripping of collective bargaining rights. Will this de facto filibuster be effective in regards to concessions, or in ultimately blocking the bill? |
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| 5. President Obama appears to have come out on the side of laborers. How will this play out in the national political arena? |
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