[...] Craftspeople and semiskilled operatives were once central to industrial production and services. Today, engineers, scientists, and managers control them, through computer and other electronically mediated technologies. This shift was recognized as early as 1921, in Thorstein Veblen’s book Engineers and the Price System. Veblen said that the AFL—a craft-based federation—was doomed to marginalization; engineers were the key to the highly mechanized labor process. However, he held out little hope that engineers could be recruited into unions as long as capital was prepared to pay them handsomely. This judgment remains a challenge to unions, one they have been reluctant to take up. [...]