Sally Field stars in the working-class labor biopic Norma Rae in 1979. Writing in Time in 1970, Gloria Steinem mused that "Seldom do utopias pass from dream to reality, but it is often an illuminating exercise to predict what could happen if they did". For Steinem, writing about the women's movement at its zenith, there would be some witness borne as to what that may look like as many of the changes she sought (at least in the mainstream of her thinking) would become building blocks of basic American notions of justice and equality (at least in the mainstream of society). There are few examples of great societal transformations in very short time; what was then called "Women's Lib" is one example. The civil rights movement, the fall of communism, some would say Margaret Thatcher's Europe or the post-war American economy could also contend. At least for some, these moments in history saw major transformations in the structure of society and in our notions of justice; while they hardly heralded utopias, they were rocket-paced progressions. Much of such progress comes in defining moments. Both revolutionaries and establishmentarians like a sense of completion, and often appreciate appropriate pageantry. In the 1980s, conservatism had its share of them. Three decades after President Reagan's 49-state reelect, however, much of his dogma has been swept unceremoniously into history's wastebasket by either the nation at large or by his own party. But one item from the old right's agenda has just notched another victory, and many haven't even noticed. For years, the cause rarely made front-pages, was considered a general election loser for Democrats, and never had the kind of media point-man parties and politicos appoint to other causes. Despite all this, late on Saturday night, American unions were dealt another blow in a continuously unraveling decades-long decline. Like a Social Security deal, but easy The $1.1 trillion spending bill that was approved by the Senate in late Saturday slashed pension plans that cover over 10 million workers and retirees in industries that include trucking and manufacturing, and while the cut to badly failing multiemployer plans was defended as necessary but its supporters, some groups like the AARP and in an uproar. The problems with these funds are hardly new. As they cope with an aging workforce and recession-sparked investment losses, many of these wells have been drying up for years and many other employers have opted out of such plans long ago. The Congressional proposal allows plans that are projected to run out of money in the next ten to twenty years to cut the benefits they pay to not only future retirees, but current ones. Unlike the rhetoric on Social Security, where even conservative Republicans maintain that promises are promises and those above the 62-65 year retirement age (and those approaching it) must have their benefits safeguarded, union benefits are much easier to gut. While disabled pensioners will be protected, the age threshold to retain full benefits is now at age 80. Those above 75 but not yet 80 will see a cut less deep than the under 75 crowd. It's hardly a Christmas miracle. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government agency that insures these pension plans, warned last month that its reserves are low enough to be alarmed. What unions have been bemoaning for years, however, is that there is little alarm at all in Washington. Senate Democrats left and center prioritize saving the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature domestic reform, in the face of shutdown-threatening Republicans. While the blame for last year's shutdown got piled on the furthest-right Republicans in Congress, including by many in their own party, it showed a Democratic resolve on the issue of health care unmatched on other causes. For the further-left flank of the Democratic Party, now embodied by freshman Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, attacks on Wall Street regulations are also indefensible; the left is digging its heels in on economic issues they claim have affected the middle class and the financial world has been painted with a fresh bulls-eye after years of moderation. And yet unions have never made the cut for prime-time Democratic attention in the post-Reagan years. How did we get here? Looking back on the conservatism of the 1980s, much of its hand-wringing seems so old-school its bizarre. The rhetoric on gays would make even the conservatives of today blush (replete with a notion that the AIDS epidemic was somewhere between a somber God-sent plague and a terribly funny joke) and the evangelizing of the Moral Majority that we should marry the Christian church and state (the church of Jerry Falwell, not mainline squishes or, even worse, Catholics) would sound like a much greater threat to religious liberty than birth-control mandates or rulings about wedding cakes. In fact, the extremes of this rhetoric railed against present realities in the 1980s with strange disavowals of the Civil Rights Act and the women's movement's Equal Rights Amendment, two of the Republican Party's most broadly supported goals. The circus elements of the right in the '80s often mask the less-radical, less-sensational, but more realistic goals of the era. And on labor, the right led a dark, quiet march to victory. In many ways the 1980s saw the birth of base-politics as we know them today. The hard-right pandering of the Republican Party and its emerging twin, the Sanders-Warren left in the Democratic Party, are creatures of Reagan era. In changing to adapt, the Democratic Party left the McGovern school for the winning centrism of Bill Clinton. The Democrats, facing the conundrum that Thatcher outlined when she praised America for having two free-market political parties as opposed to the conservative-socialist European model, fought against charges that they were unfriendly to capitalism. The labor unions, which long brought support to, but also caused trouble for, the Democratic Party, were left to the wayside, a remnant of the left-wing of a party gone "third way". In modern times, even what appears to be a new "New Left" isn't big on labor's cause. Barack Obama, seen as the liberal victor over the center-left policies of Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, only offered nominal support for labor's card-check legislation. George McGovern, the name eponymous with 1970s liberalism (the losing kind) even attacked the legislation. In fact, the scrappier labor became, the more they were hated. Modernization failed; so did the tried old methods. The pitchforks were out when they were the big bullies; they've now been neutered as the underdog. In many ways, it's never been good to be labor. Despite the liberal admonitions that "plutocrats... understand that unions put more money and power into workers' hands at the expense of management and owners" and that anti-labor activity is a one percent-plot, they've had trouble convincing the masses as to the benefits of the labor union. Even amongst former fans of labor, "not your father's union" pretty much sums up the resentment today. With their corruption often as well noted as corporate America's (but with the inability to be naturally bankrupted) many liberals don't care all that much about losing them. Around the corner The quiet march continues in earnest for labor's foes. Kansas' Republican Governor Sam Brownback, having survived his bruising reelection fight last month, is now considering the option made popular by fellow GOP governors, New Jersey's Chris Christie and Wisconsin's Scott Walker: skim the pension fund to bail out an economically unsound state while maintaining and furthering tax cuts. In the early 1950s, one out of three American workers belonged to a trade union, including four out of ten in the private sector. Today, only 11.8 percent of American workers are union members with private sector union membership at just under seven percent - and falling. Today, there are only eight states where at least a tenth of private-sector workers belong to a union, down from nearly all states (forty-two) in 1983 (halfway through the first Reagan term). In populism's cradle, the American South, union contracts aren't only close to eradicated, but speaking the word "labor" may be akin to "witch" in the Salem of three centuries ago. The environment isn't likely to be friendly to labor for a long time, and it seems unlikely that the trade unions will ever match their mid-century heights. It's time for Americans to plan to get along without them.