ABSTRACT
Throughout the 1980s, the American trade union movement sustained major losses both at the bargaining table and on the picket lines. With the United Autoworkers (UAW) agreeing to wage concessions at Chrysler, the 1980s ushered in an era of concession bargaining that hit virtually every major industrial union in the United States. In addition, the government’s breaking of both the air traffic controllers’ strike and the controllers’ union (PATCO) in 1981 gave the green light to private sector companies to take on their unions in all-out struggles. As a result of this strategy, bitter and violent (as well as losing) strikes often ensued such as when the United Steelworkers Union battled Phelps-Dodge Corporation in the Arizona copper mines in 1982–84 and when the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union Local P-9 took on Hormel in Austin, Minnesota, over drastic wage cuts in 1985–86.
