Last week, the state of Indiana passed its own right to work statute, thus becoming our nation’s 23rd & one of the few Midwestern right to work states. For a summary of what this means, check out this 2/1/12 New York Times article.

Illinois, where I’m located & which intensely competes with Indiana (as well as Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin & Missouri) for business, isn’t a right to work state. In other words, in Illinois a worker must join (or pay dues) to a union if the workforce is union represented.

Based on all of the Occupy Wall Street protests & all of the union activity associated with the Occupy movement, as well as the union push for expedited NLRB elections, it seems logical to conclude that labor unions would have converged on Indianapolis en masse to protest Indiana’s right to work law. The Super Bowl is among our nation’s biggest single day events. It’s broadcast around the world, it’s media saturated, & has an immense audience. If the labor movement wanted to make a statement, then what better place than in Indianapolis only days after its right to work law was passed & during Super Bowl weekend? Yet, labor unions were nowhere to be seen or heard this past weekend (or at least the media coverage leads me to believe this).

Does labor’s silence during Super Bowl weekend have significance?  Yes. For years, as I’ve repeatedly stated on my blog & elsewhere (here, here & here), the U.S. labor movement, especially in the private sector, is dying a slow & painful death. Some recent reports indicate that the shrinking has slowed (see article), but this may be due to the fact that the union movement has shrunk to its core constituency & it lingers where it still has significance. That is, unions are still relevant in industries where safety is a key concern, & management has largely ignored safety issues (e.g., heavy industry like mining & extraction & long distance transportation & shipping), but in the rest of the private sector, unions have largely been rendered useless. Now, in the immediate aftermath of Indiana’s passing its right to work law & hosting the Super Bowl, it appears that unions are conceding that they’re losing their grip on the American workforce & business.