Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party

"The publicly displayed political and associational loyalties of today's workers are far different from the proclaimed affiliations of their predecessors. As Herman, an 80-year old retired steelworker, explains it, "(it's] totally different than it was back then." He continued, "you could not go to the steel mill or mine and find a guy who would vote for a Republican. It was just a given. (Workers back then] figured that there wasn't a Republican in the world who took care of the working guy." Herman's belief about politics is not unique. Through interviews and analysis of local media dating back to the 1950s, Theda Skocpol and Lainey Newman find that these solidifying sentiments capture the overall picture of decades long shift in political loyalties among many kinds of American rural, white, blue-collar workers, including those who are still members of unions. What factors lie behind the realignment of political loyalties of many of today's union members? That is the fundamental question that Skocpol and Newman seek to address in Rust-Belt Union Blues. Adding new evidence and lines of argument to earlier efforts to make sense of such sharp shifts in the unionized blue-collar world, they ground their analysis of changing political loyalties-including among still-unionized workers-within a richer analysis of shifting social identities and community-based social ties. By studying one of America's most fabled twentieth-century industrial regions-the 20-county stretch of western Pennsylvania from Erie to Pittsburgh and Johnstown to Aliquippa where steel manufacturing and associated industries were once king-Skocpol and Newman attempt to understand the new conservative-inflected identities and ties that have flourished in growing vacuums left by the recedinglocal and community presence of unions. Rust Belt Union Blues takes the focus from aggregate and national trends down to the places where life and work proceeds day by day"--
Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats.
In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members—mostly men—and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities.Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats. Drawing on interviews, union newsletters, and ethnographic analysis, they pinpoint the significance of eroding local community ties and identities. Using western Pennsylvania as a case study, Newman and Skocpol argue that union members’ loyalty to Democratic candidates was as much a product of the group identity that unions fostered as it was a response to the Democratic Party’s economic policies. As the social world around organized labor dissipated, conservative institutions like gun clubs, megachurches, and other Republican-leaning groups took its place.Rust Belt Union Blues sheds new light on why so many union members have dramatically changed their party politics. It makes a compelling case that Democrats are unlikely to rebuild credibility in places like western Pennsylvania unless they find new ways to weave themselves into the daily lives of workers and their families.