Union decline combined employer attacks with passive consumer alternatives

Evidence

To be sure, the latter’s decline involved both push and pull factors. In Anglo-Saxon countries, in particular, antilabor legislation and employers’ concerted strategies of union busting contributed to undermining the labor movement. Across much of Europe, too, laws impeded the establishment of works councils and worker representation on corporate boards, the practice known as “codetermination.” Faced with globalization and deindustrialization, unions found themselves increasingly on the defensive. Meanwhile, passive alternatives to union or party power—cheap credit, self-help gospels, cryptocurrency, online forums—steadily multiplied. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 105

Categorization

• XREF: The push-pull distinction is load-bearing for the reader’s causal framework: what emptied institutions was both attack and substitution by credit/self-help/crypto — a mechanism of depoliticization. — connects to: Union decline reflects weakened attachment to membership itself, not unions specifically — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 267; Financialization may be a root cause behind union decline and offshoring — Ken-Hou Lin & Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Financialization and U.S. Income…, 185