bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Innovation and Adaptation: Contrasting Efforts to Organize Home Care Workers in Four States
Authors: Mareschal Patrice M.
Published: April 2013

This paper chronicles the SEIU's efforts to organize home care workers in California, Oregon, Washington, and New York. Drawing on inter views with union leaders and organizers as well as secondary source data, I compare the political strategies employed and the outcomes achieved in these states. Across the cases, the SEIU changed its orga nizing strategy to adapt to the unique environmental characteristics of each state. Despite the anti-union animus of federal labor law, the labor movement can still achieve important organizing successes, albeit at great expense in time and resources. Employees of private-sector companies that rely primarily on taxpayer funds may prove to be fertile sources of new union members, and unions with a track record of success in both the public and private sectors may be best positioned to stem the long-term decline in American union density.
Changes in Occupational Segregation by Gender and Race-Ethnicity in Healthcare: Implications for Policy and Union Practice
Authors: Queneau Hervé
Published: April 2013

This paper analyzes the extent to which gender and racial-ethnic segre gation in healthcare occupations changed from 1983-2002. Although gender segregation was sizably reduced during this period, men and women in healthcare were still substantially segregated in 2002, to a greater extent by gender than by race and ethnicity. Blacks and non- blacks were more segregated than Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Over the last two decades, the index of segregation of blacks compared with non-blacks remained fairly stable while segregation of Hispanics compared with non-Hispanics markedly increased. Although women made progress entering the highest-paying healthcare occupations, they remained substantially underrepresented. Women and blacks were extremely overrepresented in the lowest-paying occupations. Blacks and Hispanics were underrepresented in better-rewarded occupations. This paper also examines the implications of the findings for policy and union practice.
Tracking Local Unions Involved in Managerial Decision-Making
Authors: Eaton Adrienne E. , Rubinstein Saul A.
Published: April 2013

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the impact of union and worker participation in managerial decision-making on the union as an institution. It then looks at the experience over time of eleven local unions heavily involved in various forms of participation, trac ing both the trajectory of participation and union outcomes. The outcomes examined include membership levels, member participa tion, leadership development, internal politics, collective bargaining and grievance handling impacts, and enterprise unionism. Analyses of these cases suggest that participation may be declining. At the same time, participation does not seem to have profoundly altered the nature and functioning of these unions. Further, participation does not appear to "cause" enterprise unionism, but local unions that are isolated economically and politically do have trouble coping with participation. Finally, overall, these local unions often lack resources to do both participation and their traditional functions well.
Labor Education and Labor Art: The Hidden Potential of Knowing for the Left Hand
Authors: Sawchuk Peter H.
Published: April 2013

Approaches to education, knowledge and aesthetics are reviewed in order to discuss the role of art in union member education, distinguish ing between insurgent art linked to oppositional political projects and dominant forms of Art Proper. Art is observed in terms of both produc tion and consumption, drawing on psychologist Jerome Bruner's no tion of knowing for the "right" and "left" hand and cultural-historical approaches to learning. It is argued that labor-based art is an important mediator for expanding labor education and activist development. To illustrate the ideas, a brief case study of a union-based arts production with school custodians in Canada is outlined.
Why Do Members Leave? The Importance of Retention to Trade Union Growth
Authors: Waddington Jeremy
Published: April 2013

Drawing on survey results from three British trade unions, this paper examines why members leave trade unions. In this study, as anticipated, a great many members left their unions because of some change to their employment circumstances (they were made redundant, they changed employers, or they retired). A significant proportion left because they were dissatisfied with some aspect of union organization. The paper also demonstrates that the proportion of members leaving because of dissatisfaction varied according to a range of factors, including union "type" and sector of organization. The research implies that if unions are to reverse membership decline and promote retention, they must address a range of issues in addition to introducing new means of organizing and recruitment.
Expanding the Union Zone: Union Renewal through Alternative Forms of Worker Organization
Authors: Haiven Larry
Published: April 2013

This article presents a conceptual model that seeks to explain why trade union incidence in North America encounters difficulties and how the union movement might approach renewal. Those who use the work of others for profit are considered not only employers, but also "deployers" of labor; even self-employed workers are often in situations of dependency vis-à-vis their deployer. This gives rise to new possibilities and new forms of collective action, which the trade union movement should either embrace or with which it should collaborate.
Emergent Design
Authors: Babson Steve , Juárez Huberto
Published: April 2013

Unions seeking cross-border alliances need research that identifies allies, analyzes the economic and political terrain, and clarifies the issues that unify workers. The International Research Network on Autowork in the Americas (IRNAA) is analyzed as one such effort that began as an academic enterprise and evolved into a clearinghouse for cross-border union communication and from there into a national forum for Mexican auto unions. This unanticipated evolution and the eventual disappointment of IRNAA's ambitious goals suggests that labor-oriented academics can make a substantial contribution to initiating cross-border links between unions but cannot sustain them independently of other necessary conditions for international solidarity. IRNAA's experience also demonstrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of personal networks in initiating cross-border collaboration. The narrative and analysis depends primarily on the authors' “insider account” as cofounders and coordinators of this undertaking.
Fighting Marketization
Authors: Gill-McLure Whyeda
Published: April 2013

As public-service unions and workers struggle against privatization, they must emphasize that their labor is distinctive because it produces use-values composed of concrete, unquantifiable labor. Use-value production responds to social needs and permits the development of a “public service ethos.” Market mechanisms are continually eroding public-service labor and welfare services in an effort to reduce their value to that of a commodity. Case study evidence presented here shows that such marketization causes job loss, casualization, intensification, and loss of worker morale. Workers and unions have fought hard to overcome the worst effects of contracting out by cooperating with other unions, with sympathetic managers, and with the local community. To keep their service from deteriorating, they can argue that municipal labor is distinctive. The article relates the findings and arguments to municipal manual labor in the United States.
Giving Labor the Business?
Authors: Park David J. , Wright Larry M.
Published: April 2013

This study empirically examines the extent to which business journalism has taken over labor reporting between 1980 and 2000. The authors conduct a content analysis of The New York Times , The Washington Post, and Associated Press during this time frame. Our results note a widening gap between labor and business coverage dramatically in favor of business-oriented journalism. Business journalists now cover labor issues. Qualitative and quantitative changes in coverage are discussed, as well as the implications from these trends. The authors suggest that labor groups invest in more media and/or public relations to better convey their messages.
Unions Facing the Future: Questions and Possibilities
Authors: Fairbrother Peter , Williams Glynne , Barton Ruth , Gibellieri Enrico , Tropeoli Andrea
Published: April 2013

The current circumstances of trade unions are subject to extensive debate. As a contribution to these debates, three sets of issues are ad dressed : how unions organize and operate in relation to members, how unions reposition and rebuild themselves against changing forms of ownership and different managerial practices, and how unions attempt to face the challenges of multinational capital. Unions have sought to renew and revitalize themselves by changing organizational practices or changing aims and ambitions, as well as by recomposing past rela tionships, especially between unions and state bodies. These themes are addressed via three case studies chosen to exemplify particular aspects of union organization and activity. The study concludes with a comparative evaluation of the three cases in terms of the principles of union renewal.
“Fighting for Our Share of the American Pie”
Authors: Worley Jennifer L.
Published: April 2013

This article analyzes the 1985 Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel strike and places it in the context of the declining American steel industry and deteriorating relationship between the steel companies and the United Steelworkers of America. Within the hostile 1980s economic and political climate, steelworkers at Wheeling-Pitt unleashed a repertoire of bargaining tactics that would help them achieve at least some of their demands while preventing the company's liquidation. Besides exploring the reasons why steelworkers struck a bankrupt company and how they secured their demands, the article demonstrates how the strike offered new strategies for negotiating with capital at a time when unions' options were severely limited.
Global Labor Organizing in Theory and Practice
Authors: Garver Paul , Buketov Kirill , Chong Hyewon , Martinez Beatriz Sosa
Published: April 2013

Although the need to organize workers at the global level has become widely accepted, there are to date few concrete studies of global organizing campaigns. Four staff members from the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) analyze the IUF's Nestlé/Coca-Cola Global Organizing Project in the light of the emerging literature on this topic. The IUF launched this ambitious organizing campaign in response to institutional demands and opportunities. Resources were identified to hire organizers working in the Global South to coordinate and support unions organizing at major global companies. Several case studies illustrate how a complex multilayered strategic organizing approach has succeeded in making headway against fierce antiunion resistance in some developing countries. The analysis also suggests that long-term sustainability of strategic global organizing efforts requires their successful application to organizing workers at global companies in industrialized countries as well as in the Global South.
Organizing across Difference and across Campus
Authors: Bickham Mendez Jennifer , O'Neil Spady James
Published: April 2013

The authors analyze the practices and internal dynamics of a living wage campaign (LWC) at a liberal arts university to evaluate its implications for low-wage workers' social and economic justice struggles. A vibrant coalition among faculty members, students, and staff members demonstrated the complexities of organizing across racial, class, and status differences when participants hold different stakes. The campaign's diverse membership was its greatest strength and challenge, as campaigners brought with them key resources but also divergent understandings of the LWC's meaning and ultimate goals. Although the LWC's efforts at engaging in participative decision making, building relationships, and developing compatible frameworks of meaning created a culture of solidarity that invigorated the movement despite multiple obstacles, they were not sustainable. The campaign's dissolution and ultimate reformation as a union with a very different culture and practice raises questions about the strengths and limitations of LWCs and their implications for a revitalized labor movement.
The Yugoslav Experience with Workers' Councils
Authors: Singh Parbudyal , Bartkiw Timothy J. , Suster Zeljan
Published: April 2013

Workers' participation in the management of their work lives is widely regarded as vital to the success of contemporary organizations. One form of nonunion employee representation, widely acclaimed in Europe and rare but receiving increasing attention in North America, is the workers' council. The authors provide a review of the experience, role, structure, and functions of workers' councils in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, a country that undertook one of the most comprehensive programs of worker self-management, including the widespread and legally mandated use of workers' councils. The authors then discuss key issues and concerns about workers' councils.
Reorganizing Higher Education in the United States and Canada
Authors: Dobbie David , Robinson Ian
Published: April 2013

Every year in Canada and the U.S., the share of higher education faculty who teach off the tenure track grows. One might expect that faculty unionization would limit this process, but the data examined here indicate that this is not so. While Canadian universities are significantly more unionized than their U.S. counterparts, they rely at least as heavily on contingent faculty. Similarly, U.S. states with high levels of unionization do not exhibit lower levels of casualization. Union strategies that institutionalize divisions between tenure-track and non-tenure-track, and/or between part-time and full-time faculty, probably play a role in this outcome. They can and should also play a pivotal role in reversing these trends if they develop the political will to do so.
A New Frontier for Labor
Authors: Wheeler Hoyt N.
Published: April 2013

Worker ownership is an old idea that is newly relevant. A crucial reason for ownership that is seldom noted nowadays is its potential to contribute to industrial democracy. Worker ownership is widespread in both the United States and Western Europe. For ownership to translate into influence on corporate governance, workers' capital power must be organized collectively. Trade unions can serve this function. In France, Italy, and Germany, unique organizations called worker shareholder associations have come into being with the exercise of workers' capital power as their goal.
Labor Education in the Time of Dismay
Authors: Zullo Roland , Gates Alice
Published: April 2013

Notably absent from the discourse on labor union revitalization is a reevaluation of the strategic role of labor education. Using ethnographic methods, the authors elucidate four dimensions of a Freireian-based labor education program, characterized as (1) where rank-and-file unionists teach, (2) where shared experience is the basis for knowledge, (3) where programming involves a dialectical process of action and reflection, and (4) where participants convene in a collectively determined cultural context. Moreover, the authors address reservations to Freireian pedagogy and describe how the adoption of Freireian programming alters the role of labor educators. Finally, the authors hypothesize that Freireian pedagogy complements several contemporary recommendations for arresting the decline in union representation.
Through the Looking Glass
Authors: Lund John , Roovers Benjamin J.
Published: April 2013

This article examines whether the new labor organization annual financial report (Form LM-2) has significantly improved transparency of union finances over the old form by providing useful and easily understood information to union members, government, and the public. The new form, filed by unions with $250,000 or more in annual receipts, was first published by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards in December 2002. After reviewing the changes made in the new LM-2 form, the authors then use data drawn from a stratified random sample of union filings under the new LM-2 form to determine what additional gain in transparency has actually occurred.
Societal Context of Labor Union Strategy
Authors: Adaman Fikret , Buğra Ayşe , İnsel Ahmet
Published: April 2013

This article questions the societal context of labor union strategy for the case of Turkey, where the legacy of the military junta of 1980—1983 is still vivid. The results by and large indicate a clear rupture between unionized and nonunionized workers, a fact that highlights the significance of innovative union strategies directed at expanding membership in a way to include atypical workers so as to resist union decline. This rupture also points, however, to the reasons why such strategies might not be forthcoming where they are especially needed. Where unions have a precarious existence, the expansion of the membership base could be the only way to gain legitimacy and power. Yet, it is precisely their precarious existence that might condemn unions to a myopic strategy, leading them to concentrate on the interests of their limited membership that they try to maintain at all cost.
Contending Rationality, Leadership, and Collective Struggle
Authors: Albright Jason
Published: April 2013

Building strength within a diverse constellation of social actors, including workers, clergy, faculty, students, and other activists, the Service Employees International Union's spring 2006 Justice for Janitors campaign at the University of Miami helped open a new local space for working-class political contention through an engaged and escalatory organizing and first contract drive. In an effort to empower workers as the base of a larger struggle against the exploitation of Miami's working poor, the campaign drew upon the creativity of workers in shaping and enacting a political agenda toward economic justice while building up Miami's social activist community, including a local chapter of the national Interfaith Worker Justice committee.
Organized Labor in Residential Construction
Authors: Rabourn Mike
Published: April 2013

Residential construction is the largest sector of the construction industry and operates virtually union free in most parts of the United States. The jobs it provides offer some of the lowest wages and worst working conditions in the industry. For these reasons organizing the residential market is crucial to the future of building trades unions. This article explores why unions lost the residential market decades ago, how employers and workers developed in the absence of unions, and what kind of organizing activity is happening in the market currently. The article concludes by offering suggestions for future organizing in residential construction.
Displacement-Related Earnings Losses
Authors: White Roger
Published: April 2013

The author examines the effectiveness of stylized versions of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) and Alternative TAA (or wage insurance) programs in reducing displacement-related earnings losses. Wage insurance subsidies and returns to TAA-funded training are applied to estimates of proportional earnings losses, reported by White, that were generated using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data spanning the period from 1979 to 2000. Wage insurance reduces the typical worker's losses by 14.4 percent, while TAA-funded training is estimated to reduce losses by 23.7 percent. However, variation in the time paths and magnitudes of losses produces considerable variation in the effects of these programs across worker types.
Challenges and Possibilities for Democratic Grassroots Union Elections in China
Authors: Chan Anita
Published: April 2013

In 2001 and 2002, Reebok facilitated democratic trade union elections at two of its supplier factories in China. After initial successes in one factory in bargaining with management to improve conditions, in the end the experiment failed. This article describes in detail the election process, the elections’ aftermath, and the power dynamics of the actors involved (Reebok, the supplier companies’ management, the workers, their newly elected trade union committees, the district-level trade unions, and the Chinese trade union federation). The article analyzes the reasons behind this failed experiment and concludes by arguing that in a new changed climate today, both within China and within the international trade union movement, the Reebok experiment is worth reexamining.
“Bearing All the Hallmarks of Oppression”
Authors: O'Sullivan Michelle , Gunnigle Patrick
Published: April 2013

Ryanair is now Europe's largest low-cost airline. It is also one of the most controversial, due to its outspoken boss, its cost-containment strategies, and its hostile relations with organized labor. Ryanair has consistently denied accusations that it is antiunion, stating that it respects the right of workers to organize and even claiming to be a champion of its employees' right to non-unionization. However, this claim does not hold up in the face of extensive evidence of union suppression. This article addresses such evidence, particularly, the various methods by which Ryanair has avoided and suppressed unions. In Ireland, Ryanair successfully crushed an organizing campaign by the country's largest union, the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union, after a lengthy and bitter strike. The only other union continuing to challenge Ryanair is the Irish Airline Pilots Association. However, its efforts recently suffered a major setback when the Supreme Court ruled that Ryanair's nonunion “employee representative committees” were a form of collective bargaining, allowing the company to affirm its nonunion status.
Corporate Employee Representation, Union Strategies, and Third-Party Union-Linked Monitoring
Authors: Cândia Veiga João Paulo , Martin Scott B.
Published: April 2013

This article examines an unusual experiment in Brazil with an employee “social dialogue” process established at the BASF chemical company, following the broad outlines of European works councils (EWCs) created in the 1990s under European Union requirements for large companies operating in that region. The new representation-cum-consultation scheme was created under a global push by BASF’s German headquarters to emulate EWCs in its various regional operations overseas, though also in response to union pressures. Once the structure was in place, management attempted, with at least partial success, to carry out a pre-emptive strategy of “venue-shifting.” Nonetheless, unions avoided institutionalized co-optation or management “divide and rule” and expanded the agenda of consultation and negotiation beyond their traditional scope. Third-party union-linked monitoring—quite distinct from typical “independent monitoring”—helped raise the salience and legitimacy of various union and worker grievances.
Community Unionism and Union Renewal
Authors: Cockfield Sandra , Rainnie Al , Buttigieg Donna , Jerrard Marjorie
Published: April 2013

The purpose of this article is to identify various ways unions engage with communities and to understand the obstacles that confront union—community cooperation. Qualitative data was analyzed from multiple sources, including documentary evidence and interviews with union officials and community activists. We locate the debate on community unionism within the broader literature on union renewal and revitalization. In doing this we are able to explore the potential of different forms of union—community relationships to foster union renewal. The study reveals the diversity in relationships both within and across unions and the existence of coalitions operating at different levels within union organization. While the unions in this study were actively seeking to engage with the community, not all alliances were reflective of an inclusive social and political agenda which could constitute the basis for union renewal.
Subcontracted Employment and its Challenge to Labor
Authors: Wills Jane
Published: April 2013

This article argues that subcontracted employment is becoming paradigmatic. This form of employment has stark consequences for traditional models of trade union organization that focus on collective bargaining with the employer. The article highlights the need for subcontracted workers to put pressure on the “real employer” at the top of any contracting chain. Drawing on the lessons from community-union organizing efforts and, particularly, living wage campaigns, the article suggests that trade unions can effectively work with other social movements and allies in the community to secure the political leverage needed to change the terms and conditions of subcontracted employment. The article illustrates these arguments by exploring recent experience of the living wage campaign in London. The article draws on original research material from the Homerton Hospital and Queen Mary, University of London, to explore the progress of these living wage campaigns and their wider significance for labor organization.
Fighting for Equal Treatment
Authors: Bielski Boris Monica
Published: April 2013

This article explores how the United Auto Workers (UAW) came to address the issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/sexual (LGBT) union members. The UAW demonstrated its commitment to LGBT concerns through its successful fight to provide health care benefits to same-sex domestic partners during the contract negotiations of 1999 with the “Big Three” U.S. automakers. The UAW, however, does not fit the structural or demographic profile of a union likely to be proactive on LGBT issues because the union represents predominantly blue-collar men in private sector manufacturing jobs. An intensive qualitative case study of the UAW’s response to sexual orientation concerns was conducted to explore the adequacies of the predominant theories regarding labor unions and sexual orientation. The case study found that the responsiveness of the UAW was associated with individual and collective agency, the support of outside allies, and ideological traditions of social movement unionism.
Gender and Globalization
Authors: Baruah Bipasha
Published: April 2013

This article identifies the opportunities and constraints faced by female construction workers in urban India through empirical research conducted in the city of Ahmedabad. The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) conducted two surveys in 1998 and 2003 to understand the needs and priorities of construction workers in the context of economic globalization. A third survey was conducted in 2007 to assess the impacts of construction training programs conducted by the SEWA Housing Trust. While enthusiastically endorsing the role that training and certification can play in providing skilled women with quality employment opportunities, the author emphasizes the need for wider policy intervention at the state and national level to ensure that such programs have replicable, sustainable, and gender-equitable results.
Would the Employee Free Choice Act Effectively Protect the Right to Unionize?
Authors: Nissen Bruce
Published: April 2013

This article examines in detail union busting in a nursing home facility in Florida and asks whether the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would have protected workers' freedom to choose if it had been in effect at the time. It systematically applies EFCA's provisions to the events of the case and concludes that EFCA would have been helpful to the workers. However, EFCA would not have erased all obstacles to free employee choice, especially for low-wage workers like these. It also reveals that one of the least known features of EFCA would have been most crucial in this case.
Mapping the Boundaries of Human Rights at Work
Authors: Hilgert Jeff
Published: April 2013

Over the past twenty years, International Labour Standards have been cited increasingly as the authoritative, worldwide body of jurisprudence on workers' rights as human rights. Continuing the debate on what constitutes labor rights, the author contrasts the definition of workers' rights under international human rights standards with U.S. labor history's notion of “pure and simple unionism,” examining the boundaries of rights defined by international standards in a comparative historical context. The standards examined include workers' right to organize; coercive employer speech; access to employer premises; nonmajority representation; the right to strike, picket, and boycott; union security clauses; the scope of bargaining; government enforcement; and the legal doctrine of employer association rights. Aligning U.S. labor relations law with international human rights standards would in part be a social advancement, but significant aspects of the standards advocate pure and simple unionism more than the original National Labor Relations Act, raising questions about how labor movements should use international standards as advocacy tools and public policy goals.
“Why Should the Business Agents Be Bigger Than the Organization?”
Authors: McCarthy Michael Alexander
Published: April 2013

Union democracy has tended to result in prolabor contracts in the American labor movement. However, many rank-and-file movements attempting to transform staff-led unions into democratic ones have experienced failure. The author examines some of the reasons why insurgent democracy movements are often unable to institute lasting democratic structures and militant reforms in the building trades, through an in-depth analysis of a failed rebellion in New York City’s painters’ union from 1947 to 1973. In contrast to recent literature that explains success and failure by emphasizing the traits of the general membership and the tactics of insurgent reformers, the author argues that fuller attention should be given to the union characteristics that generate staff power. In particular, the author shows that job allocation through the hiring hall is one means by which a corrupt staff can discipline an insurgent membership. The author also shows that when these conditions are undermined through contestation, staff-employer collusion can continue to make discipline through job allocation possible.
The Social Innovations of Autogestión in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises
Authors: Vieta Marcelo
Published: April 2013

Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises ( empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores [ERTs]) have shown to be promising grassroots solutions by workers to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic crises that resulted from the country’s collapsing neoliberal model at the turn of the millennium. The author first explores the historical conjuncture in which ERTs emerged. Second, the author theoretically situates ERTs’ practices of autogestión (self-management) and workers’ cooperativism. Third, he sketches out their most common microeconomic and organizational challenges. Last, the author maps out four “social innovations” being spearheaded by ERTs, appraising the social and economic transformations that these innovations prefigure, especially during hard economic times.
Contemporary Party-Union Relations in Canada
Authors: Savage Larry
Published: April 2013

The longstanding political alliance between the Canadian labor movement and the New Democratic Party (NDP) has experienced new stresses in recent years. Whereas the NDP was widely considered the political arm of the labor movement during the Keynesian post-war period, under neoliberalism, the relationship between most unions and the NDP has become more tactical and less cohesive. This article surveys contemporary party-union relationships in Canada, at both the federal and provincial levels, with a view to demonstrating that weakening party-union relations are rooted in larger macro-economic and political transformations and are shaped by factors related to region and language.
How Do Religious Groups Respond to Class and Inequality?
Authors: Zullo Roland
Published: April 2013

Using a county-level population analysis, the author examines whether the interaction between religious groups and class and inequality predict voter turnout and voter preference for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election. Results indicate that for counties with high densities of mainline Protestants, lower income, and lower education meant depressed voter turnout and higher Bush support; with high densities of Jewish adherents, lower income yielded elevated voter turnout, while lower income along with less education equated with less Bush support; with high densities of Catholics, lower income meant higher voter turnout; with high densities of Evangelicals, lower income yielded depressed voter turnout; however, lower income and less education correlated with less Bush support. These patterns held for county income inequality when median income was controlled. The results challenge the perception that Evangelical groups in lower-SES regions persuaded members and their acquaintances to vote against their economic interests. Rather, the results imply that mainline Protestant groups in lower-SES regions successfully shifted votes to Bush. The findings suggest that outreach by labor and other progressives to Evangelicals, especially those in poorer regions, can lead to political collaboration.
Global Industrial Relations? Framework Agreements and the Regulation of International Labor Standards
Authors: Thomas Mark P.
Published: April 2013

In response to an absence of effective methods of international labor standards regulation, International Framework Agreements (IFAs) have emerged as a strategy promote labor rights in transnational supply chains. This article analyzes IFAs, with particular attention given to their capacities to move beyond the weaknesses of unilateral corporate codes of conduct. By facilitating social dialogue between transnational corporations and global union federations, IFAs hold potential to involve unions and workers in transnational labor standards regulation.Yet they are weakened by a top-down approach that needs greater connection local union organizing. To move beyond their limitations, they must more effectively combine a transnational focus with traditional union strategies such as organizing and collective bargaining.
Contesting Labor Internationalism: The “Old” Trapped in the “New” in Volkswagen’s South African Plant
Authors: Bolsmann Chris
Published: April 2013

During the 1970s and 1980s, close linkages were established between unionists in Volkswagen’s Uitenhage plant in South Africa and Wolfsburg in Germany. The ensuing relationship resulted in trade union internationalism and solidarity with South African workers in their struggle against apartheid. After the insertion of the South African plant into the global production networks of the company, a range of new pressures and challenges confronted the union in South Africa. This resulted in the mass dismissal in 2000. In an attempt to garner international support and solidarity, the dismissed workers tapped into existing structures with no success, illustrating the reconfiguration of trade union internationalism away from worker interests to those of the unions and company.
Talking Ourselves to Death? The Prospects for Social Dialogue in North America—Lessons from Alberta
Authors: Foster Jason
Published: April 2013

Europe’s model of tripartite “social dialogue” has long been elusive in North America, yet unions continue to look at the model as a possible path toward greater policy influence. Is social dialogue possible in a North American context? Is it in the interests of the North American labor movement? This article examines two cases studies from the Canadian province of Alberta that reveal that a complex decision matrix faces unions considering participation in social dialogue. The necessary structural prerequisites for labor-friendly policy outcomes continue to be absent in North America, but the process may hold some promise in limiting employer initiative, at least in narrow policy fields. Unions also need to consider possible consequences for their capacity to organize and mobilize.
Canadian Autoworkers, the Climate Crisis, and the Contradictions of Social Unionism
Authors: Hrynyshyn Derek , Ross Stephanie
Published: April 2013

This article explores the contradictions in the Canadian Auto Workers Union’s (CAW) approach to environmental issues, particularly climate change. Despite being one of the Canadian labor movement’s leading proponents of social unionism— understood as a union ethos committed to working-class interests beyond the workplace, and a strategic repertoire that involves community-union alliances— the CAW’s environmental activism demonstrates the contradictory way that social unionism can be understood and practiced by unions. Through a critical discourse analysis of CAW policy documents and leadership statements, we show the union has not reframed its bargaining demands to emphasize both economically and environmentally sustainable production. Instead, the CAW’s relatively uncritical defense of the North American auto industry and the jobs it provides, despite the clearly negative role such production plays in the climate crisis, its acceptance of the structures of automobility, and its emphasis on environmental issues that have little to do with the nature of their industry, indicates the way that social unionism can be an add-on rather than a fundamental reorientation of a union’s role and purpose. We argue that, for social unionist environmental activism to be effective, the CAW must incorporate social unionist goals and analyses into their bargaining priorities, and confront the contradictions between their members’ interests as autoworkers, on the one hand, and as workers and global citizens who require economically and environmentally sustainable livelihoods, on the other.
Bargaining for Rights in Luxury City: The Strategic Dilemmas of Organized Labor’s Urban Turn
Authors: MacDonald Ian Thomas
Published: April 2013

A number of service-sector unions in the United States have turned to urban land-use strategies in alliance with community organizations to achieve organizing goals and sustain bargaining regimes in a hostile environment. These union strategies typically entail the formation of project-specific “common cause” coalitions with community organizations in order to leverage local benefits, living wages, and union rights from private developers and growth-oriented local governments.The labor studies literature on community unionism understands these strategies through the analytical frame of social movement theory, and closely associates them with labor movement renewal. In approaching the question from the perspective of critical human geography, this article highlights a contradiction that emerges in labor’s land-use campaigns in cases where redevelopment entails the transformation of working-class neighborhoods into spaces of production and luxury consumption. The article argues that a strategy of negotiating distributional shares out of prospective increases in land values in such cases encourages union-community coalitions to prioritize workplace over residential demands, in turn reproducing structural divisions between labor and community. The argument is sustained through a discussion of the involvement of the New York City hotel workers union, UNITE-HERE Local 6, in a labor-community coalition formed to contest the terms of the redevelopment of Coney Island. The case study casts some doubt on whether labor-community land use strategies of this type are consistent with labor movement renewal.
A Different Perspective on the “Labor Rights as Human Rights” Debate
Authors: Goutor David
Published: April 2013

This article brings further historical and international perspective to the “labor rights as human rights” debate. It particularly contends that these perspectives need to be explored further in order to appreciate the extent to which the definitions and political implications of key ideologies behind labor and human rights activism are flexible and dependent on their context. It explores Canada in the 1940s and early 1950s, when there was major activity on the labor and human rights fronts. Although many Canadian organizations, legal systems, and campaigns were modeled on—or formally affiliated with—American ones in these years, the progress of labor and human rights activism followed a distinct path, and particularly unfolded at a distinct pace. This distinct pace, the relatively small size of ethnic and racialized minority populations, the basic political and legal structure, and rise of a leftist third party in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation all helped labor and human rights activism fit together comfortably to a notable extent in Canada. This article will particularly show why the relationship between human rights and labor was significantly less fraught with potential downsides for Canadian labor leaders. It also highlights another important impact of context: the particular combination of conditions and forces in Canada produced a number of unexpected results.
Organizing to Organize
Authors: Kniffin Kevin M.
Published: April 2013

After nearly four decades of campaigning, faculty and academic staff union members across the University of Wisconsin system won the right to bargain collectively in June 2009 when the governor signed legislation that modified state labor law. In this article, the author presents historical and interdisciplinary analyses of the organizational structures that were critical to the campaign’s success. While the case study should be interesting for academics across disciplines, the Wisconsin experience carries generalizable lessons for union organizing in any sector of the economy. In addition to cataloguing the tens of legislative attempts that faculty and academic staff unionists undertook to win collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin, the article juxtaposes the legislative goals with environmental variables, such as which political party controlled state government and how many faculty and academic staff were committed to the campaign at any given time as regular dues-paying members. It is clear in this light that persistence paid dividends for the campaign and that leverage created by the local unions in relation to their state and national affiliates was necessary for the campaign’s longevity and success. Against this backdrop, the author also considers the degree to which tensions between a local union and its larger affiliates might variably affect organizing across different international unions. The case study has relevance for discussions of minority or nonmajority unions as well as strategic decisions about how unions pursue level playing fields for organizing new members.
Union Renewal, Postheroic Leadership, and Women’s Organizing
Authors: Briskin Linda
Published: April 2013

This article examines leaders, leadership, and union renewal with a focus on women’s leadership and organizing. First, it considers the links between union renewal and women’s local and informal leadership; and second, the contribution of constituency and cross-constituency organizing to union revitalization. It scrutinizes notions of “heroic” leaders, often implicit in union discourse and practice, which undermine membership mobilization, impede the diversification of leadership demographics and the union renewal project, and contribute to the invisibility of other forms of often-gendered leadership. It explores the alternative paradigm of postheroic leadership and argues that constituency organizing is a form of postheroic practice. In so doing, this article challenges union-renewal paradigms to take more seriously women’s union leadership and constituency organizing as vehicles for revisioning unions, and offers some alternative entry points into the longstanding political debates and scholarship about women and trade union leadership.
Workers’ Power in the Global City? Lessons from Three New York Transit Strikes
Authors: Ikeler Peter
Published: April 2013

Drawing on the influential global cities paradigm, this article derives three hypotheses about the future of organized labor in major urban centers of the advanced capitalist world. Hypotheses are structured around Erik Olin Wright’s concepts of structural and associational power, plus that of employer power, and explored through comparative analyses of the last three strikes by New York City transit workers in 2005, 1980, and 1966. Examination of these conflicts supports two global cities predictions about the evolution of workers’ power in major urban centers while contradicting doomsday arguments about a supposed one-way decline of workers’ power.
The Evolving Demographics of the Union Movement
Authors: Zullo Roland
Published: April 2013

Trend analyses indicate that the union movement is becoming less white and more female. In this research, the author examines the transitions of persons in and out of the union movement in order to understand whether diversification is due to behavior or structure. Results indicate that African Americans transitioned comparatively faster than others from nonunion to union employment, even after controlling for industry and occupation. Latina/os also display evidence of an above-average preference for union representation, with transitions into unions suppressed by immigrant status. For women, the growing demographic numbers appear to be due to the relative stability of the industry or occupation in which persons are employed. In general, the findings for part-time workers, education, and annual trends point to an increasingly challenging environment for unionizing over the decade.
The Experience of Leadership
Authors: Bryant-Anderson Rachel , Roby Pamela A.
Published: April 2013

This article extends discussions of gender, race, and union leadership by considering the experiences of women of color, white women, men of color, and white men who already occupy union leadership positions. Using interviews with 124 stewards from ten trade unions, the authors examine the daily experience of steward work, as told by stewards themselves. The authors find that gender and race interact to shape stewards’ leadership experiences and that stewards craft leadership styles that respond to their particular gendered and raced experiences. Finally, the authors consider the implications of their findings for unions interested in facilitating the leadership of underrepresented groups.
Organizing the Ivory Tower
Authors: Savage Larry , Webber Michelle , Butovsky Jonah
Published: April 2013

Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of relevant primary documents, this article explores the 1996 unionization of full-time academic faculty at Brock University, a public and primarily undergraduate university in southern Ontario, Canada. The case study examines both the impetus for unionization and the strategies employed by the faculty association in support of certification with a view to demonstrating how discourses of professionalism and collegiality can be challenged, subverted, and redeployed by academics intent on organizing, mobilizing, and ultimately winning support for unionization.