Analysis Of First, Stop The Self-Flagellation By Lance Campa

The main idea of Lance Campa’s article “First, Stop The Self-Flagellation: How Unions Can Thrive in the 21st Century” is that advocates and scholars are misleading workers by declaring that the labor movement is dying. With the declarations that unions are an organization of the past, advocates believe that workers won’t join a movement that won’t exist in the coming years. “Workers won’t join a movement that constantly proclaims it is going down the tubes and is going to disappear in ten years” (Campa, 2015). Campa states that everyone needs to “get a grip”. It only makes sense, because why would you want to join something that you even remotely thought would be dead anytime soon, but is this really the case? “In 1932, the
If technology was going to take over, they would not need nearly as many people working in the unions, and the people they would need would have to be very highly qualified (Campa, 2015). Campa disagreed. Campa believes that the labor movement is stronger than ever, and he just might be right. Within the next 15 years after the president of the American Economic Association made that prediction, the labor unit had tripled in size. Campa backs up his claims by discrediting the union density statistics where the headlines claim proof of labor’s decline. Union density measures the percentage of the work force that is unionized. The latest figures in 2015 show it at 11.1 percent, down from a high of 30 percent in the 1950s (Campa, 2015). The national average is lower than the union density in some areas such as New England, around the Great Lakes and on the West Coast. The U.S. is a big country, so showing 11.1% of the work force being unionized is going to look degrading to anyone. A more reasonable example might be to look at California. California has had an increase in
Some of the ways a union can help the workplace are unions raising wages, reducing wage inequality, setting a pay standard, fringe benefits such as paid leave, better health benefits and better pension plans but it is not just for just union workers, it is for all workers. But, even if they get these benefits, it is not just because they are trying to reduce or minimize the challenges that they will encounter when it comes to being a union, there is much more to that. As Campa says in his article, “there is no going back to a Golden Age of stable jobs in huge mass production sites making union organizing easier than it is today. Unions now have to respond to workers’ concerns in a more fluid economic environment.” I would say that the previous statement is one of Campa’s main arguments in the article. He understands that things are never going to go back to the way things used to be, and that is perfectly fine, but now we have to do something about it. He does not try to hide the truth from the reader. He states that he understands that it is going to be a long, hard work in progress. But, with the right people doing the right work, it’s still