It doesn’t help that Americans have been told for decades, long before Fox News, that unions are all corrupt and just care about taking a percentage of your paycheck.
Don’t forget about McCarthyism, where everything attached to the labels of communism and socialism are evil. That of course, does not include socialism for corporations. That’s fine.
Then you couple that with classic Ayn Rand individualism.
I wonder if it’s a regional thing? Growing up I never heard bad things about unions, and when I found out the job I’m currently in is union I was pretty happy. For the record I’m in my early 30s in the Midwest, which is not exactly widely liberal.
Not at all. There is a very long history in the U.S. of anti-union propaganda and union busting. And the people who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s had actual psychologists working on them to persuade them that unions were a bad thing.
The 1970s and 1980s were an altogether more hostile political and economic climate for organized labor.[26] Meanwhile, a new multi-billion dollar union buster industry, using industrial psychologists, lawyers, and strike management experts, proved skilled at sidestepping requirements of both the National Labor Relations Act and Landrum-Griffin in the war against labor unions.[40] In the 1970s the number of consultants, and the scope and sophistication of their activities, increased substantially. As the numbers of consultants increased, the numbers of unions suffering NLRB setbacks also increased. Labor’s percentage of election wins slipped from 57 percent to 46 percent. The number of union decertification elections tripled, with a 73 percent loss rate for unions.[37] The political environment has included the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor failing to enforce the law against companies that repeatedly violate labor law.[41]
Labor relations consulting firms began providing seminars on union avoidance strategies in the 1970s.[42] Agencies moved from subverting unions to screening out union sympathizers during hiring, indoctrinating workforces, and propagandizing against unions.[43]
By the mid-1980s, Congress had investigated, but failed to regulate, abuses by labor relations consulting firms. Meanwhile, while some anti-union employers continued to rely upon the tactics of persuasion and manipulation, other besieged firms launched blatantly aggressive anti-union campaigns. At the dawn of the 21st Century, methods of union busting have recalled similar tactics from the dawn of the 20th Century.[44] The political environment has included the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor failing to enforce the labor law against companies that repeatedly violate it.[41][45]
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to dispute that anti-union had existed for decades. I was just trying to feel out why I’ve never heard people speak ill of unions or seen anti-union propaganda in my area. I don’t imagine we have a disproportionate amount of happy union workers to counteract the propaganda.
It doesn’t help that Americans have been told for decades, long before Fox News, that unions are all corrupt and just care about taking a percentage of your paycheck.
That was weird about watching American movies in the 80s. Every other movie somebody had to mention “Sorry, can’t do that. Union rules.”
Don’t forget about McCarthyism, where everything attached to the labels of communism and socialism are evil. That of course, does not include socialism for corporations. That’s fine.
Then you couple that with classic Ayn Rand individualism.
Tbh I think this is the biggest culprit.
I wonder if it’s a regional thing? Growing up I never heard bad things about unions, and when I found out the job I’m currently in is union I was pretty happy. For the record I’m in my early 30s in the Midwest, which is not exactly widely liberal.
Not at all. There is a very long history in the U.S. of anti-union propaganda and union busting. And the people who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s had actual psychologists working on them to persuade them that unions were a bad thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States#Post-1960s
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to dispute that anti-union had existed for decades. I was just trying to feel out why I’ve never heard people speak ill of unions or seen anti-union propaganda in my area. I don’t imagine we have a disproportionate amount of happy union workers to counteract the propaganda.