‘Culture crash’ in America: Can unions save the creative class?

They’re just for hard hats. They peaked around the time Elvis was getting big. They killed Detroit. They’ve got nothing to do with you or me. They’re a special interest – and they hate our freedom.

That’s the kind of noise you pick up in 21st-century America – in politics and popular culture alike – when you tune your station to the issue of trade unions. Union membership, and ensuing muscle, have been in steep decline in both the public and private sectors. Just look at Wisconsin’s “right to work” push, the anti-teachers union “reform” movement, corporate union-busting, PR “messaging” firms hired by management to smear striking workers, hostility from the Republican right, and indifference from a Democratic Party that’s reoriented itself around professionals and Silicon Valley.

Also in decline: America’s creative class – artists, writers, musicians, architects, those part of the media, the fine arts, publishing, TV, and other fields – faced with an unstable landscape marked by technological shifts, a corporate culture of downsizing, and high unemployment.

So is it time for artists to strap on a hard hat? Maybe unions or artists’ guilds can serve and protect an embattled creative class. With musicians typically operating without record labels, journalists increasingly working as freelancers as newspapers shed staff, and book publishing...

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