The diminished importance of the American labor movement, the declining economic fortunes of working-class white Americans, and the ominous rise of violent ethnic nationalism can all be found in today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp marking Labor Day issued on September 3, 1956.
Like most of the stamps from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that I’ve been posting in this series, this one has an extraordinary level of detail that I’ve only come to appreciate as I look more carefully at enlarged images of the individual stamps. Designed by Victor J. McCloskey, Jr., a longtime artist at the Bureau of Engraving, this stamp features the central image from a mosaic created by Lumen M. Winter that had been installed in the headquarters of a new labor organization created by the merger of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO).
The stamp pictures a laboring man with his family. In one arm, the man holds an axe, a hoe, a pick, a sledgehammer and a length of rope hung. His other arm is around his wife, who holds a book open as their son reads from it. The image also includes the “Labor Is Life,” the mosaic’s title, which in turn comes from an essay by Thomas Carlyle, a Victorian-era Scottish philosopher who wrote: “Labour is Life: from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his god-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness; to all knowledge, ‘self-knowledge’ and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins.”
Work, however, does not seem to be providing as many of these rewards to American workers as it once did. Rather, over the past few decades, real wages for men with BA’s have gone up while they have gone down for men without a BA, which a good proxy for blue-collar workers. Moreover, death rates for middle-aged white men without a BA have been rising, a trend at odds with the increase in overall life expectancies for all Americans. In addition, as economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton report in a recent book, many of these are “deaths of despair” – such as drug overdoses, drink-induced liver disease and suicide.
As we all know, white men who have not been to college are the current president’s most ardent supporters. And while not all of those supporters are active members (or supporters) of the armed right-wing groups that have become increasingly prominent (and dangerous), the bulk of those groups’ members and supporters appear to be white men without college degrees.
While correlation isn’t always causation, it is striking that the decline in blue-collar wages, the rise in deaths among white blue-collar workers, and the rise in violence all coincide with a significant drop in the share of American workers who belong to unions. Illustratively, in the mid-1950s, when the stamp was issued, more than a third of all American workers (excluding those who were self-employed) belonging to a union. Today, it’s just over 10 percent, a smaller share than all but four of the 36 developed, democratically governed countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And even the 10 percent figure masks the fact that unionization is much prevalent in the public sector, where over a third of all employees are unionized, than in the private sector, where only 6 percent are.
Unionization is also geographically concentrated. Over half of all union members in the U.S. live in seven states – California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Washington – that together account for only one-third of the workforce. More broadly, only about 5 percent of workers in the South say they are part of a union, compared to 15 and 14 percent of workers in the East and West, respectively. In the Midwest—where organized labor and right-to-work laws have been the subject of intense political debate in recent years – 10 percent of workers say they are union members. (It’s no surprise then, that the Midwest is becoming a key battleground in the upcoming election.)
These sobering statistics provide some context for the increasingly heated rhetoric surrounding our presidential campaign and the larger discussions about the future of our economy and our country. Don’t get me wrong: the American labor movement clearly has had – and continues to have – its flaws. But, as we approach Labor Day 2020, it’s worth pausing for a minute to consider what we’ve all lost via policies and approaches that clearly leave so many working-class individuals and families behind and, in doing so, to begin thinking about what can be done to address those losses in ways that are equitable, just, and likely to succeed.
Be well, stay safe, fight for (political and economic) justice, and work for peace.