The Commons

Cardus’s Brian Dijkema advocates for a new conservative home for organized labor in this adaptation from American Compass’s “A Seat at the Table” series.

Few Americans realize how our system of organized labor is an outlier among Western nations. In some European countries, unions attract a greater share of workers and maintain less adversarial relationships with business. A better understanding of these alternative models can guide American policymakers as they address our labor policy challenges.

American Compass’s Oren Cass argues that a strong, reformed labor movement has unique potential to advance conservative priorities.

This is one of those half-baked blog posts that are the point of a blog but increasingly rare; after all, in the digital era everything seems to just get slicker and more centralized. There are only three sites to post to and you have to be on, and casual-Friday professional, you know?, for your brand. If you want to spitball you can just tweet. Anyway.

American labor law has become worse than useless: a lower share of the private-sector labor force is organized today than before the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935. The time has come for an entirely new model.