I found a good one in "The Rise and Fall of U.S. Unions," by Emin M. Dinlersoz and Jeremy Greenwood. Boiled down to a sentence: Technological innovation gave life to the American union. Then technological innovation killed the American union.



RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE



We'll start at the beginning. The setting is 1900, Michigan. The scene is car factory. There are skilled mechanics, who can assemble complex parts and oversee operations, and unskilled laborers, who do menial work like carrying and shoveling. Then there's Henry Ford, who changed everything.



Innovation in the form of assembly lines and mass production gave power to unskilled workers. With just a few minutes of training, anybody could put two nuts or attach a wheel and pass the car down to the next guy. What had once been an "artisan" economy, reliant on skilled mechanics, became an assembly-line economy, reliant on unskilled laborers. The conditions were ripe for the rise of unions.



"When the demand for unskilled labor rises there is a larger payoff to unionizing it," the authors contend. Unskilled labor is homogenous -- there are a lot of workers capable of fixing two bolts -- which makes it easier and more fruitful to bargain collectively. Unionization has historically occurred in occupations and industries that attract unskilled labor. Just as importantly, it has historically not occurred in occupations that don't attract skilled labor. The few tech unions that exists -- such as WashTech and Alliance@IBM -- represent a tiny portion of the overall industry. It would seem that skilled laborers aren't as interested in yoking their fortunes together to achieve a wage boost.



In the second half of the 20th century, the information age did a few things that badly hurt unions. First, robots replaced unskilled workers in factories. Second, IT created complicated machines and programs that required something more than assembly-line competence. (Third, although this isn't prominently featured in the article, multinational companies got savvier about offshoring cheap labor that wasn't automated.) Just as Ford's innovation had disproportionately empowered unskilled workers, who are more likely to unionize, the information age had had disproportionately empowered skilled workers, who are more likely to not unionize.



As heavily-unionized industries declined, non-skilled workers lost their bargaining power -- and the middle class lost its share of overall income. The authors conclude: "The decline of the assembly line economy and the rise of the information age during the second half of the century [led] to the ∩-shaped pattern of unionization and the ∪-shaped one for income inequality."







WHAT NOW?



To review the theory: In the early 20th century, assembly line technology downplayed the skills of workers. It turned workers into specialized cogs. It also made unions alluring and effective and decreased income inequality. The next technology revolution, however, accentuated the skills of workers. As a result, it reduced the effectiveness of unions, increased the college premium, and fed income inequality.

