How and why have American labor unions grown in the century and a half
since the industrial revolution? In this concise and illuminating
history of the labor movement, Daniel Nelson traces the ebb and flow of
union activity since the early nineteenth century. Rejecting an emphasis
on individual leadership or the uniqueness of American "conditions," he
instead looks to three factors to explain labor's record: the role of
the autonomous worker, the threat of employer reprisals, and the
influence of external forces such as government policy. His chief
concern is to describe and document the historical experience,
especially the erratically rising level of union membership from the
close of the nineteenth century to the 1960s, and the reversal of that
phenomenon in recent decades. Mr. Nelson devotes special attention to
miners' unions in the years up to the 1950s, to government policy in the
New Deal years and after, and to the development of sophisticated
anti-union employer strategies in recent years. The strength of Shifting
Fortunes lies not only in the scope of its coverage but in its
evenhanded portrayal of employer-worker relations.