In 1978, resigning United Auto Workers president Douglas Fraser delivered a scathing critique of the American managerial class.

“I believe the leaders of the business community, with few exceptions, have chosen to wage a one-sided class war today in this country—a war against working people, the unemployed, the poor, minorities, the very young and the very old, and even many in the middle class of our society,” Fraser said.

Looking at Fraser’s diagnosis as a prediction for the current day, the only part he was missing was how the government would join the managers.



While unions have never been as powerful in the United States as they are in Europe, tales of workers standing up on a mass scale abound: The Farmers Alliance that bandied together to battle the federal corruption of the 1880s; the Flint factory sitdown strikes of 1936 and the rise of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in the wake of New Deal legislation; the explosion of textile unions in the 1950s and their eventual integration in the 1960s.

The wildcat teacher strikes of the past two years and the ongoing UAW strike against GM prove this fight is still alive among the workers—in 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 485,000 workers took part in work stoppages, the highest number since 2007. But the state legislatures, the courts, Congress, and the Oval Office that once lined up behind labor seem to have lost enthusiasm for concrete reforms for the workplace. Government is rarely more than a rhetorical labor ally, candidates courting union leadership for their backing.