Ends and Odds: The Ravings Of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Nine of 'Why Feminism Didn't Leas To Socialsim.

      Chapter Nine of "Why Feminism Didn't Lead To Socialism' by Dave Jaffe.
    




          As U.S. media swung even further to the right in the 1970's, Canadian media went in the same direction. CTV and the Asper-owned media empire kept churning out conservative right wing news. As said  before,Conrad Black took over many papers and turned them into right wing outlets. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was never a progressive media outlet. In the 1980's it endorsed right wing policies. Most Canadian media cheered on massive tax cuts for the rich, the shrinking of social programs, scrapping unions and wars against left wing regimes. In the face of this right wing propaganda, the New Left of the 1970's shrank in support and numbers.
    In the 1970's also two of the greatest union organizers in American history died under mysterious circumstances. Walter Reuther, a pillar of progressive causes died in a plane crash that some said was an assassination. Five years later the former head of the Teamsters union Jimmy Hoffa disappeared after going to an appointment in Detroit. His body was never found.
     Hoffa was tarnished with his links to organized crime. Still, he organized hundreds of thousands of truckers in the 1930's and later. Reuther was one of the few union heads who could have bridged the gaps that lay between the New Left and organized workers. The deaths of these two men left the American unions leaderless in the 1980's.
      One of the first things the newly-elected U.S. President Ronald Reagan did after becoming president was to fire all the members of the air traffic controllers Union. "We voted for that guy," one traffic controller told this writer, "and then this S.O.B. goes and fires us all." Reagan's action set off an anti-union wave that swept across America. Hundreds of thousands of union members lost their jobs as big companies shut down their U.S.-based plants and moved offshore. Public workers lost their jobs as state and city governments privatized their services. State governments hobbled union organizing by passing new restrictive laws.
   When writer-activist Michael Parenti visited parts of the U.S. in the 21st century he complained that unions had vanished in many parts of the U.S. The Reagan and the Bush presidencies shrunk the numbers and power of unionized workers dramatically. In the early 1960's, 30 per cent of American workers belonged to unions. By 2000  that number had shrunk to less than 20 per cent. In Canada the percentage of unionized workers fell from 40 per cent in 1970 to less than 30 per cent to-day.
      This shrinking power of unions tipped things even further to the right and strengthened the power of the rich. Again, this was another defeat for the left wing.