Port strike averted in eastern US, for now. Is labor starting to claw back?

Citing traffic-clogging Thanksgiving protests by the Service Employees International Union at Los Angeles International Airport, bakers going to battle with Hostess, and a recent eight-day clerical workers strike at West Coast ports (where most longshoremen refused to cross picket lines), labor expert Philip Dine says the movement “is clearly in a more aggressive mode right now.”

“I think what we’re seeing is … labor realizing that it needs to think about and pursue its own goals,” says Mr. Dine, author of the newly revised book “State of the Unions.” “And when you’re willing to [cripple port traffic and] stall traffic at major airports on the busiest travel day of the year, it shows labor is willing to antagonize shoppers and travelers, and it means labor means business.”

Chris Rohmberg, a sociology professor at Fordham University, told The Oregonian newspaper this month that a series of dockworker actions – including the recent clerical strike and a looming shutdown of several northwestern ports over failed contract negotiations – are about workers setting a new tone with their employers as the economy struggles its way out of recession.

“The whole relationship between employers and workers is on the table,” Mr. Rohmberg told The Oregonian.

While union membership has been falling for decades, several dockworkers’ unions have seen membership tick up in recent years, partly in response to a recession and prolonged recovery that has made workers feel particularly vulnerable to management cutbacks.

According to Dine, discord in the labor movement and disillusionment over broader social and economic trends have been largely cast aside amid what many see as an all-out war on labor by conservatives, including nearly a dozen Republican governors in the Rust Belt. The governors are seen as trying to eviscerate the labor movement by arguing, in essence, the illegitimacy of public worker unions, whose members now make up the majority of the US labor movement.

“At this point, if you destroy public-sector unions you destroy the labor movement, which means labor is now fighting for its life,” says Dine. “As a response, the labor movement has become more serious, determined, unified, and energetic, and so it’s not really any surprise that you’re seeing these signs of activism, which, objectively, you might not expect in a poor economy or with a Democratic president.”

While negotiators remain “cautiously optimistic,” in Cohen’s words, a longshoremen’s strike remains possible. Such an action would have a vast impact on the US economy, crippling a US supply chain that has become increasingly “direct-to-market” as retailers and car companies rely less on stockpiled goods.

Meanwhile, labor experts say consumers and businesses should expect to see more labor disruptions across the country, as unions begin to rally after years of retrenchment.

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