According to the short assigned reading of articles and videos from Module 11, particularly "What's Behind Union Decline?", and both "How Unions Help Cocktail Servers",and "Reagan vs. Patco - The Strike that Busted Unions", you learned labor unions in the U.S. have declined more than in other countries (including the United States" more globalized" neighbor to the north).

• Using the content of these above articles which in part discussthe differences between institutions and policies in in the U.S. and different countries and their effects on the balance of power between workers and employers, as compared to and within the U.S. explain:

a. Why have the number of workers represented by unions fallen in the United States over the last few decades? explain thoroughly.

b. And, Is globalization by itself, a plausible explanation for the drop in the number of workers represented by unions in the United States over the last few decades; and, if not briefly discuss another explanation discussed in the material from module 11?

You may want to cite an article of your own (maybe something about the recent Amazon labor union organizing effort and victory against all odds). make sure to include citation from reading material.

article 1:

Please read this article to give you a basic understanding of the gender pay gap and how unions change that outcome in the United States.

How Unions Help Cocktail Servers

Brittany Bronson New York Times AUG. 17, 2016

This summer I worked as a seasonal cocktail server, a job that came with a membership in the largest union local in Nevada, Culinary 226. In my first week on the job, I chatted with a co-worker in the elevator. I asked how long she had been working there. "Twenty-eight years," she said. "And I just got my dream shift last week!"

There's significance to that conversation beyond making a friendly acquaintance. Unions are strong in Las Vegas, and they bring benefits that cocktail servers and hotel workers in other states can only dream of: Beyond better wages and health care packages, union members are ensured set schedules and their first choice of coveted shifts, based on seniority. It's why there are so many lifers in my industry: At the top of our cocktailing matriarchy was a woman who had joined the union in 1973.

So although the stereotype of a cocktail server is a young, provocatively dressed woman, if you visit a unionized casino on a Friday night, you will find that most women working the pit have fine lines and wrinkles, maybe even gray hair around their temples. Or, come on a weekday to witness the 9 a.m. arrival of unionized housekeepers, predominantly older Hispanic women, the earliest pioneers of the union and a matriarchy in their own right.

And matriarchy is the right word: While there are a good number of men in Vegas's union jobs, women and in particular older, immigrant women make up a vast majority of Culinary 226's members, and are often its leading voices.

The Las Vegas casino scene runs counter to most American workplaces, where women tend to lose power as they age. According to research(Links to an external site.)by the recruiting site Glassdoor, the pay gap, even after it's adjusted for things like occupation, increases with age from 2.2 percent for women ages 18 to 24 to 10.5 percent for women between 55 and 64. Family obligations and gender discrimination take women out of the American work force, meaning fewer promotions, fewer women in management and ultimately fewer raises.

Yet Nevada, home to an industry where sex appeal can be a legal job requirement, boasts one of the smallest gender pay gaps in the country. According to a December 2015 report by PayScale, the state tied with Connecticut for the state with the most equal gender pay.

There are certain statistical realities that work to our advantage. Wage industrieslike hospitality, with large numbers of women, tend toward greater equality. The unemployment rate can falsely shrink a wage gap, and Nevada's is currently high.

But according to the Pew Charitable Trust,unionization plays a large role in shrinking the gap: Women in unions make 88 percent of what men earn, compared with the 81 percent that women make outside unions.

The benefits ripple outward, in the form of family wealth building and educational opportunities. According to a March 2015 New York Times report, a girl in a poor family who grows up in Las Vegas will make 7 percent more than she would elsewhere by age 26. Income mobility for women is better in Clark County, where Las Vegas is, than it is in 71 percent of counties nationwide.

But hundreds of academic studies have not reached consensus on what particular factors, like unionization, best shrink the pay gap. Some concludethat the sorting of sexes into different industries, like my beloved cocktail waitresses and housekeepers, is actually the biggest obstacle women face.

Unionization alone won't solve the pay-equity gap. Some academics even argue that the very thing that gives Vegas's unionized matriarchy its strength an industry dominated by women also exacerbates the wage gap nationwide, since jobs like server and cleaning staff tend to be low-paying and have little to no mobility. Most experts conclude that the gap won't close until women infiltrate the male-dominated realm of executive positions.

Others point to politics, and, indeed, there is a positive correlation between states with smaller pay gaps and higher numbers of female representatives. Nevada is currently ranked sixth in the country, with women making up a third of elected state officials. Wyoming, which according to PayScale is the worst state for pay equity, also has the smallest number of women who hold political office a meager 13 percent.

But correlation is not always causation. Vermont, where 41 percent of elected officials are women, passed a pay-equity bill in 2013. In Colorado, which has the highest number of women in politics, two major pay-equity proposals died in the state's 2016 legislative session.

Of course, getting women into office and executive suites is an important goal in itself, and the possibility that Hillary Clinton will be our next president opens the door to a broad conversation about pay equity. But while Mrs. Clinton, who won Culinary 226's endorsement, has made it a key issue, who knows where the political winds of 2017 and beyond will push her agenda.

In the meantime, the one thing that we know not just from data, but from the experience of thousands of Culinary 226 workers is that unionization makes an enormous difference in women's lives. Next time you're in Vegas, just ask your cocktail server.

Brittany Bronson is an English instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a contributing opinion writer.

Article 2:

The total number of union members in the United States peaked between the late 1970s and early 1980s, at over 20 million. As of 2010, it remained near 15 million. The story of union decline in the United States, however, does not begin in the 1980s, nor is it as modest as these figures would suggest. Union density (or the "unionization rate"), the number of workers who are members of unions as a percentage of all employed workers, has been declining in the United States for over half a century. The share of U.S. workers in unions peaked in 1954, at just over 25%. For nonagricultural workers, the high-water mark-at more than one third of employed workers-came even earlier, in 1945. It would reach nearly the same percentage again in the early 1950s, before beginning a long and virtually uninterrupted decline.

By 2010, the U.S. unionization rate was less than 12%. It would be even lower were it not for the growth of public-sector unions since the 1960s. For private-sector workers, the unionization rate is now less than 7%. There are multiple reasons for union decline, including shrinking employment in highly unionized industries, falling unionization rates within these traditional bastions of unionism, and failures to unionize in new, growing sectors. Employers' determination to rid themselves of unions has certainly played a major role in declining unionization rates. Where employers could not break unions, they were determined to find ways around them-even during the period of the so-called "capital-labor accord," from the 1940s to the 1970s. In reality, this was less a friendly relationship than a transition, on the part of employers, to low-intensity warfare when a frontal assault was not possible. Unionized companies established parallel non-union operations, a practice sometimes known as "double breasting," gradually shifting production and employment away from their unionized facilities. Some employers began contracting out work formerly done by union employees to non-union subcontractors (the original meaning of "outsourcing"). Some established new operations far from their traditional production centers, especially in less unionized and lower-wage areas. Many companies based in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, for example, set up new production sites in the South and West, and eventually in other countries. Finally, new employers entering highly unionized sectors usually remained nonunion. The auto industry is a good example. So-called "transplants" (factories owned by non-U.S. headquartered companies) have accounted for an increasing share of the industry's shrinking labor force, and have remained overwhelmingly non-union.

Historically, union growth has come primarily in short spurts when unions expand into new industries. Since the 1940s, however, U.S. unions have failed to organize in growing industries to compensate for the declines in employment and unionization races in traditional union strongholds. The public sector represents the one major exception. Since the early 1970s, union density for public-sector workers has increased from about 20% to over 35%. This has not been nearly enough, however, to counteract the decline among private-sector workers. To maintain the overall unionization rates of the 1950s or 1960s, unions would have had to enlist millions more workers in the private sector, especially in services.

The Employers' Offensive

Since the 1970s, employers have fought unions and unionization drives with increasing aggressiveness, as part of what labor historian Michael Goldfield calls the "employer offensive." Many employers facing unionization drives fire vocal union supporters, both eliminating pro-union campaigners and spreading fear among the other workers. Researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) have found that, between 2001 and 2005, pro-union workers were illegally fired in around one-fourth of all union election campaigns. Meanwhile, during many unionization campaigns, employers threaten to shut down the facility (at lease in part) if the union wins. Labor researcher Kate Bronfenbrenner reports, in a study from the mid 1990s, that employers threatened plant closings in more than half of all unionization campaigns, and that such threats cut the union victory rate (compared to those in which no such threat was made) by about 30%. The employer offensive has unfolded, especially since the 1980s, against a backdrop of government hostility towards unions. The federal government has often turned a blind eye co illegal tactics (or "unfair labor practices") routinely used by employers to fight unionization drives. Employer retaliation against workers (by firing or otherwise) for union membership, union activity, or support for unionization is illegal. So is an employer threatening to close a specific plane in response to a unionization drive. However, since the 1980s, union supporters argue, the government agencies tasked with enforcing labor law have increasingly ignored such practices, imposed only "slap on the wrist" punishments, or delayed judgment, sometimes for years, long after the unionization drive is over and done with.

Figure 1: Union Members as a percentage of Employed Workers United States, 1930-2003

Figure 2: Work Stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers United States, 1947 - 2010

Before the 1980s, it was relatively rare for employers to fire striking workers and hire "permanent replacements." (Sometimes, employers would bring in replacements during a strike, but striking workers would get their jobs back after a settlement was reached.) During the 1980s, private employers increasingly responded to strikes by firing the strikers and bringing in permanent replacements- a practice that is illegal in many countries, but not in the United Scares. Some labor historians point to the Reagan administration's mass firing of striking air-traffic controllers (members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO) in 1981 as a deliberate signal to private employers that the government approved their use of permanent replacements (as well as other union-busting tactics). The number of large strikes, already in sharp decline during the preceding few years (possibly due to the employers' offensive, rising unemployment, and other factors), has since declined to microscopic proportions. People do not go out on strike if they feel that they are not only likely to lose, but to lose their jobs in the bargain.

At this point, union density in the United States- less than a tenth of all private-sector workers- is almost back down to its level on the eve of the Great Depression. An optimistic union supporter might note that the 1930s turned out to be the greatest period of union growth in U.S. history, with substantial additional growth in the 1940s and 1950s largely an aftershock, of that earlier explosion. There is no guarantee, however, that history will repeat itself, and that the weakness of organized labor today will give way to a new burst of energy. In the midst of a deep recession, and now more than five years of a feeble recovery, there have been few signs of a labor revival. Ironically, only the recent attacks on public-sector workers and unions have provoked a mass-movement fight-back. Labor supporters, however, should understand this, soberly, as coming from a very defensive position.

Is It Globalization?

Union size and strength have declined not only in the United States, but also in most other high-income countries. The reasons are complex, but globalization has surely played a role. Along with changing patterns of demand and increasing mechanization, global sourcing of production has contributed to employment declines in traditionally high-unionization industries. It has also provided employers with a stronger trump card when workers try to form new unions- the threat to relocate, especially to low-wage countries. To a greater or lesser extent, these effects are probably felt in all high-income countries.

Unionization rates, however, have declined in some countries much more than in others. According to data compiled by economist Gerald Friedman, the unionization rate for the United States peaked earlier, peaked at a lower percentage, and has declined to a lower percentage today, compared to those of most other high-income countries. Today, 14 high-income countries (out of 15 listed by Friedman) currently have unionization races higher than the United States' 14%. Ten have rates higher than the U.S. peak of about 26% (reached in 1956). Six have rates above 50%; three, above 80%. (The declines in the unionization rates for IO of these countries, since each one's peak-unionization year, are shown in Figure 3.)

Figure 3: Percentage decline from peak unionzation rate, selected countries (peak year in parentheses)

Figure 4: Unionization rates, Canada and United States, 1920-2009

Let's compare, in more detail, the trajectories of unionization in the United States and its neighbor to the north, Canada (shown in Figure 4). Until the 1960s, the trends in the two countries were similar-declining in the 1920s, bottoming out in the early 1930s, growing dramatically through the rest of the 1930s, the 1940s, and into the 1950s. Since then, however, the two have diverged. The U.S. unionization rate has traced a long and nearly uninterrupted path of decline for the last half century. Meanwhile, the Canadian rate, which had gone into decline in the 1950s and 1960s, recovered between the 1970s and 1990s. It has declined somewhat since then, but remains nearly three times the U.S. rate (almost 30%,compared to just over 10% for the United Scares). It would be difficult, even ignoring the Canadian data, to attribute U.S. union decline just to international factors, such as import competition (which became a major factor in the 1970s) or global sourcing (which has been a major factor since the 1990s). These factors simply come too late to fully explain trends going back to the 1950s. Looking at the comparison with Canada, however, drives the point home: "globalization" is simply not the irresistible tidal wave, wiping out unions across the globe, that many commentators claim. There are a couple of possible explanations for the divergence of U.S. and Canadian unionization rates (or, more generally, the divergence of the unionization rates in any two capitalist economies in the era of globalization). First, perhaps it is possible for a country to effectively insulate itself from the global economy. That is, it may use controls on international trade and investment to prevent its economy from becoming "globalized" or, more likely, to regulate the ways that it is integrated into the world capitalist economy. That is, however, definitely not what is going on with Canada. It is a member of NA FT A; its economy is highly integrated with that of the United States, both in terms of trade and investment; its imports and exports, as a percentage of GDP, are actually much larger than those of the United States. By any standard Canada has a more globalized economy than the United States.

Second, even if a country's economy is highly integrated into the world capitalist economy, the political and legal environments for labor relations-as well as the history and culture of its labor movement-have tremendous effects on the ability of unions to survive in the age of globalization. A recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) attributes the much sharper decline of U.S. unions primarily to "employer opposition to unions-together with relatively weak labor law" in the United States compared to Canada, rather than "structural changes to the economy ... related to globalization or technological progress."

The report, "Protecting Fundamental Labor Rights: Lessons from Canada for the United Stares," focuses in particular on two differences in labor law: In Canada, workers have card-check unionization, the right to form a union once most of the workers in a bargaining unit have signed a union card. This prevents employers from fighting unionization-including by firing union supporters or threatening shut downs, as are common in the United Stares-during a long, drawn-out period before a union election. (U.S. unions have proposed a similar legislation at the national level, but employers have so far prevented such a bill from passing.) Also, Canadian law requires, in the event that a union and employer cannot arrive at a first collective bargaining agreement, that the two parties enter arbitration. As the CEPR report put it, this "ensure[s] that workers who voted to unionize [are] able to negotiate a contract despite continued employer opposition." In the United States, in contrast, employers often stonewall in initial negotiations, and many new unions never actually achieve a signed union contract. A third factor, not discussed in the CEPR report, is the difference between the United States and Canada in laws governing the right to strike. In the United States, it is legal for employers to fire striking workers and hire permanent replacements. Since the late 1970s, when U.S. employers started routinely using permanent replacements, strikes have become much harder for workers to win and, as a result, much less frequent. This has deprived U.S. workers of their main form of bargaining power, the ability to withdraw their labor and shut down production, cutting off the source of the employer's profits. In contrast, most Canadian provinces ban employers from using permanent replacements.

Finally, the CEPR report does note the possibility that weaknesses of the U.S. labor movement itself-especially the "lack of focus on organizing new members" -accounts for at least part of the divergence. Indeed, the labor movements in most capitalist countries have faced changes in employment patterns, and the relative decline of traditional high-unionization industries. As Friedman notes, however, some have been able to make up for declining employment in their traditional strongholds by organizing workers in growing-employment sectors (Friedman, Reigniting the Labor Movement (Roucledge, 2008)). The U.S. labor movement-mostly, to be sure, due to the hostile environment for new organizing-has not been able to do so. The Canadian labor movement also differs from U.S. labor in having created an explicitly labor-oriented political party, the New Democratic Party. (Most western European countries also have strong labor, social democratic, or socialist parties with institutional and historical ties to unions.) In many countries, such parties have played an important role in gaining favorable labor legislation, and more generally blunting attacks on labor by employers and governments.

Global economic forces affecting all countries cannot, by themselves, explain the various patterns of union decline across different capitalist countries (or the patterns would be more similar). The differing political environments in different countries-such as the laws protecting workers' rights to form unions, to go on strike, and so on-likely explain most of the differences in the degree of union decline in different high-income countries.

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THIRTY years ago today, when he threatened to fire nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off an illegal strike, Ronald Reagan not only transformed his presidency, but also shaped the world of the modern workplace. More than any other labor dispute of the past three decades, Reagan's confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or Patco, undermined the bargaining power of American workers and their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity.

By firing those who refused to heed his warning, and breaking their union, Reagan took a considerable risk. Even his closest advisers worried that a major air disaster might result from the wholesale replacement of striking controllers. Air travel was significantly curtailed, and it took several years and billions of dollars (much more than Patco had demanded) to return the system to its pre-strike levels.

But the risk paid off for Reagan in the short run. He showed federal workers and Soviet leaders alike how tough he could be. Although there were 39 illegal work stoppages against the federal government between 1962 and 1981, no significant federal job actions followed Reagan's firing of the Patco strikers. His forceful handling of the walkout, meanwhile, impressed the Soviets, strengthening his hand in the talks he later pursued with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Yet three decades later, with the economy shrinking or stagnant for nearly four years now and Reagan's party moving even further to the right than where he stood, the long-term costs of his destruction of the union loom ever larger. It is clear now that the fallout from the strike has hurt workers and distorted our politics in ways Reagan himself did not advocate.

Although a conservative, Reagan often argued that private sector workers' rights to organize were fundamental in a democracy. He not only made this point when supporting Lech Walesa's anti-Communist Solidarity movement in Poland; he also boasted of being the first president of the Screen Actors Guild to lead that union in a strike. Over time, however, his crushing of the controllers' walkout which he believed was justified because federal workers were not allowed under the law to strike has helped undermine the private-sector rights he once defended.

Workers in the private sector had used the strike as a tool of leverage in labor-management conflicts between World War II and 1981, repeatedly withholding their work to win fairer treatment from recalcitrant employers. But after Patco, that weapon was largely lost. Reagan's unprecedented dismissal of skilled strikers encouraged private employers to do likewise. Phelps Dodge and International Paper were among the companies that imitated Reagan by replacing strikers rather than negotiating with them. Many other employers followed suit.

By 2010, the number of workers participating in walkouts was less than 2 percent of what it had been when Reagan led the actors' strike in 1952. Lacking the leverage that strikes once provided, unions have been unable to pressure employers to increase wages as productivity rises. Inequality has ballooned to a level not seen since Reagan's boyhood in the 1920s.

Although he opposed government strikes, Reagan supported government workers' efforts to unionize and bargain collectively. As governor, he extended such rights in California. As president he was prepared to do the same. Not only did he court and win Patco's endorsement during his 1980 campaign, he directed his negotiators to go beyond his legal authority to offer controllers a pay raise before their strike the first time a president had ever offered so much to a federal employees' union.

But the impact of the Patco strike on Reagan's fellow Republicans has long since overshadowed his own professed beliefs regarding public sector unions. Over time the rightward shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan's mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law as Reagan portrayed it but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.

In the spring, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin invoked Reagan's handling of Patco as he prepared to "change history" by stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights in a party-line vote. "I'm not negotiating," Mr. Walker said. By then the world had seemingly forgotten that unlike Mr. Walker, Reagan had not challenged public employees' right to bargain only their right to strike.

With Mr. Walker's militant anti-union views now ascendant within the party of a onetime union leader, with workers less able to defend their interests in the workplace than at any time since the Depression, the long-term consequences continue to unfold in ways Reagan himself could not have predicted producing outcomes for which he never advocated.

Joseph A. McCartin, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University, is the author of the forthcoming "Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike That Changed America."