Today we celebrate Labor Day. It was originally dedicated to the people whose back-breaking toil built this great nation, and the organizations which defended them from the depredations of robber baron capitalists.
Today, unions represent mostly government workers, including public school teachers. In some ways victims of their own success, private sector unions have fallen on hard times. Public employee unions exert direct influence over their elected bosses in ways private sector unions never could with corporate bosses.
The work-from-home trend, begun by the Covid pandemic, has proved to be wildly popular with those whose work permits it. So popular that more than a few people have resigned when their employers demanded a return to the office.
I predict the workers from home will be much harder to organize than office workers were. Increasing numbers of government workers are doing the job at home. I saw a recent estimate that half of the DC bureaucrats and their support staff are not in the office these days.
Historians of the future may recount that office towers, labor unions and strikes were quaint artifacts of the industrial era.
Full disclosure: For several years I was represented by a union as a faculty member of the CSU system in CA. Blue CA has no right to work law so I was required to pay "in lieu" fees as I refused to become a union member.
