ABSTRACT
In his widely read book on the American labor movement, Thomas Geoghegan memorably imagined “Big Labor” in the 1990s as a mastodon—a gigantic, lumbering, thick-headed yet menacing, and extinct form of life that terrorizes in shape but does not exist. The labor movement today is at best a creature the size of a pterodactyl and a small one at that. It still “menaces” but doesn’t cover the same territory. The threat that Labor presents to shareholder profits, economic prosperity, political power, or the American Way of Life was and continues to be a product of the conservative imagination. They argue today that Labor is no less real in its power, even if exaggerated in imagination. 1 As a labor lawyer for Phelps-Dodge Copper once argued, “The entire working force of the Nation will eventually become a subservient group dependent on labor bosses for its livelihood. Thus the way is paved to labor dictatorship.” 2 In reality, labor unions had limited influence in shaping the postwar labor accord. Rather, labor leaders responded, like dinosaurs, rather slowly, despite the rapidly changing economic and political environment of the postwar years.
