Whatever the “real” motivations behind the effort, what is at stake, given the massive manufacturing exodus facilitated by NAFTA and everything after and the well-documented ravaging of the service industry unions, may be the very survival of American unionism itself.

THERE ARE A LOT of obvious things to be said about this, and some of them are probably worth saying. Unions built the American middle class. Perhaps it was never the greatest thing in the world, but as a friend whose parents work as union reps pointed out to me the other day, it at least has been a middle class. Then there’s the whole bit about the little guy versus the big guy, and how if the little guy can’t get together with all the other little guys to negotiate the terms of his labor, then the terms of that labor are always going to be the same: take it or leave it. And “take it or leave it” isn’t a choice: it’s an ultimatum. If you’re working under an ultimatum, you are being exploited. Or at the very least, you can be exploited, which in itself is a form of being exploited.