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Richard Epstein explains why a decline in union membership is a positive development for the American economy, why public-sector unions are intrinsically corrosive, and why conservative populists’ enthusiasm for reviving organized labor are misguided.
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It suddenly hit me, when Professor Epstein was describing the upward mobility of workers in a nonunion shop, I had actually seen this when I was working for a big insurance company.
The early mainframes needed to have an army of computer operators, constantly mounting and demounting tapes and disc packs. As the technology improved, became more automated, the number of people needed there was reduced. So they moved into systems programming and operations.
And management: one of those young computer operators, who probably joined the company right out of high school, became first CIO (Chief Information Officer) and then, when the computing division was spun off into a separate company, CEO.