Big business v big labour

ASKED WHATAFLCIO labour wanted, Samuel Gompers, founding president of the American Federation of Labour in the late 1800s, is often quoted as responding: “more”. His actual answer was surprisingly lyrical. “More schoolhouses and less jails…more learning and less vice…more leisure and less greed…more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.” His ability to tie loftiness to pragmatic demands for better wages and working conditions helped make the labour movement a powerful and popular force.After years in decline, big labour is regaining both power and popularity. Joe Biden, whose political career began in the union-friendly 1960s, has vowed to be the most pro-union president in history. Feeling newly empowered, workers have staged 241 big strikes this year, 58 of them in November alone. Unions are popping up in surprising places. Last month curators at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, who set one up last year, downed catalogues for a day. On December 3rd Liz Shuler, new head of the -, the successor umbrella group to Gompers’s organisation, said big tech is the next frontier to be organised. Workers at Alphabet and Kickstarter have already set up unions. Amazon is in the midst of a protracted conflict at a warehouse in Alabama. All this is going down well with Americans. Public support for unions has reached 68%, according to polling by Gallup, a level not seen in half a century.