Portside

Brad Plumer's blog post summarizes a long and interesting essay in the latest issue of "Democracy" that analyzes the decline, and long-term outlook, of private-sector unions in the United States. He highlights 3 factors: Taft-Hartley was the beginning of the end for unions in the private sector; labor’s recent attempts to launch new organizing drives aren’t working; and organized labor tends to expand only at rare points in history.

The study, which updates a 2004 report by the committee, reviews the hidden taxpayer costs stemming from the fact that many Wal-Mart workers have no choice but to use social safety net programs -- such as Medicaid, Section 8 Housing, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit -- that were designed for individuals not in the labor force or those working for small companies that failed to provide decent compensation, not a leviathan with $17 billion in annual profits.

Low-cost labor has attracted Western brands to the Southeast Asian country and garments now account for around 75 percent of its exports, but strikes over pay and working conditions have become common. Thousands of workers at Sabrina (Cambodia) Garment Manufacturing Corp went on strike for higher pay from May 21.

Sharp cuts in government spending implemented March 1 as part of the sequester are slowing the recovery. The federal government shed another 14,000 workers in May, for a total of 45,000 jobs cut over the past three months. The federal work force now is smaller than at any time since February 2008.