You've got to join that one big union, you've got to join it by yourself.

Everybody here will join it with you.

You've got to join the one big union by yourself.

Hi, I'm Warren Alney.

President Trump won election in large part because working people, including union members,

believed his claim that the system is rigged against them. But once upon a time, it was rigged

to a large extent in their favor. So what happened to what used to be called the world's

largest, richest middle class? One answer is the decline of unionized

labor. Consider this statement by an American labor leader in 1950. Democracy's most challenging

problem is to find a way to translate technical progress into human progress and prove that men can

enjoy economic security without

sacrificing their political freedom. The communist masters in the Kremlin offer

the promise of economic security at the price of political and spiritual enslavement.

While rejecting communism, American labor is equally determined to resist the abuse of economic

power in the

hands of the great monopolies. While labor maintains that the rights and dignity of the individual

are superior to the claims of the state, we also insist that people are more important than profits

and that human rights come before property rights.

That was Walter Ruther, leader of the UAW, the United Auto Workers. He had just negotiated a

contract celebrated by no less a corporate mouthpiece than Fortune magazine as the Treaty of

Detroit. Stephen Greenhouse puts that in context in a new book called Beaten Down, Worked Up,

the past, present, and future of American labor.

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