FROM INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH TO FINANCIAL MUSCLE

How did the union movement become richer while it membership was declining? And how does advent of cashed-up, quasi-incorporated super-unions alter the industrial and political equation? We examine the transformation of the movement’s shape and purpose in the past 25 years. Unions are not, as they portray themselves, champions of the poor. They are powerful special interest groups acting chiefly in the interests of well-heeled professionals.