Across America, private-sector unions are struggling. Membership has fallen from 30% in the 1950s to just 11%. Among private firms it is less than 7%. Tech firms are non-unionised. Industrial concentration has made things worse. Workers’ threats to flee to a competitor are less credible when there are fewer rival employers.

Some in the Democratic Party hope to revive the fortunes of the traditional union. But it seems more likely that new forces are at work in the relation between capital and labour. One group, United for Respect, has successfully badgered Walmart, America’s biggest private employer, into changing its pregnancy policies and offering more familyfriendly schedules—areas that male-dominated unions ignore— as well as better pay. Another, Coworker.org, enables people to press their employers on issues ranging from parental leave to climate change through online petitions. Last year Google was persuaded to drop out of a lucrative tender to provide the Pentagon with artificial-intelligence software after moral objections from its coddled coders.

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