Union decline removed a shared psychic and political infrastructure for workers

Evidence

I do not want to hang everything on trade union decline — unions are just an example of what has been removed from the psychic and political infrastructure of people’s lives over the last thirty or forty years. However, in the past, if your pay and conditions got worse, you might go to the unions and organise, whereas now we are encouraged, if, for example, stress at work increases, to see it as our own problem and deal with it as an individual. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1647

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anticipated depression fragmented unions from socialist solidarity into defensive postures — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 412; Union decline parallels the erosion of free public space — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 79; Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 654 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Union decline parallels the erosion of free public space #expands (0.82) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 79
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives #complicates (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 654
• The Great Resignation produced individual exit rather than collective worker power #exemplifies (0.75) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 102