Changing Labor Market.

Fading Power.

Opposition.

Lack of Options.

Worsening Conditions.

Public Alienation.

Dealing with Carter.

Into the 1980s.

The pact proved to be a wrong turn politically, as labor became associated closely, if unfairly, with what increasingly was being seen as a failed political leader. During the 1979-1981 recession, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in the automobile and steel industries, and labor seemed powerless to stem the pain. As Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the labor unions became an easy scapegoat for the economic turmoil of the 1970s. Reagan's firing of the air-traffic controllers of the PATCO union in 1981 was a public repudiation of unionism and the dead end of the many wrong turns the labor movement had taken during the 1970s.

Source:

Michael Barone, Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: Free Press...