Nothing to lose but their chains

Includes bibliographical references (pages 102-112)Mainstream press coverage of labor unions is grossly distorted. It emphasizes conflict, obscures context, privileges the management perspective, addresses the audience as consumers rather than as citizens, and even includes outright falsehoods. This presents grave challenges to movements for workplace justice in the US. This study examines media performance on labor issues through the lens of political economy of the mass media. In seeking to understand the obscured linkage between labor unions and social justice, research also explores the relationship between unionization and income inequality. This exploration centers on a comparison of conditions in the US, a highly unequal nation, and those in Sweden, which is among the world's most equal countries. Unionization reduces income equality, which has a host of benefits for most citizens' quality of life. As literature on Sweden demonstrates ??? and interviews with Swedish labor figures confirm ??? unionization also relates positively to participation in democracy. While historical and present conditions in the two nations differ markedly, there may be Swedish examples worth emulating here; at present, US labor figures leave some dominant ideological frames unchallenged, thereby ceding the field to competing corporate interests