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Over the last fifty years in the United States, unions have been in deep decline, while income and wealth inequality have grown. In this timely work, editors Richard Bales and Charlotte Garden - with a roster of thirty-five leading labor scholars - analyze these trends and show how they are linked. Designed to appeal to those being introduced to the field as well as experts seeking new insights, this book demonstrates how federal labor law is failing today's workers and disempowering unions; how union jobs pay better than nonunion jobs and help to increase the wages of even nonunion workers; and how, when union jobs vanish, the wage premium also vanishes. At the same time, the book offers a range of solutions, from the radical, such as a complete overhaul of federal labor law, to the incremental, including reforms that could be undertaken by federal agencies on their own.
When published in 1986, American Workers, American Unions was among the first efforts to trace the contentious relationships among workers, unions, business, and the state from World War I through the mid-1980s. In this revised edition Robert Zieger makes use of recent scholarship and bibliographical material to provide a detailed examination of the key issues of the 1980s and 1990s. "I have used Robert Zieger's American Workers, American Unions in undergraduate courses on labor history and industrial relations. This new edition brings the story up to today--and the new, updated bibliographical essay is a plus for college courses."--Darryl Holter, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Los Angeles. "A helping of sober truth about the American labor movement and its politics."--John C. Cort, New Oxford Review
This edited collection examines the relevance of trade unions 100 years on from the 1913 Lockout in Dublin. The general argument underpinning the papers in this book is that trade unions are still relevant in the 21st century, since they provide an independent collective representation for workers and address the power imbalance between the worker and employer. All of the chapter authors are based at the Department of Personnel and Employment Relations, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick. The chapters are grouped under three broad headings: The demand for trade unions in the 21st century; partnership at work and the legal context of union recognition; and case studies dealing with union organising and recognition campaigns This book provides a focus on an area not covered in any detailed way by any comparable text book.It will be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates in the area of employment relations and to practioners such as trade union officials and human resource managers.In addition it will be of interest to a wider body of academics internationally who wish to understand trade unions in Ireland for comparative purposes.
It cannot be denied that in recent decades, for many if not most people, work has become unstable and insecure, with serious risk and few benefits for workers. As this reality spills over into political and social life, it is crucial to interrogate the transformations affecting employment relations, shape research agendas, and influence the policies of national and international institutions. This single volume brings together thirty-nine scholars (both academics and experienced industrial relations actors) in the fields of employment relations and labour law in a forthright discussion of new approaches, theories, and methods aimed at ameliorating the world of work. Focusing on why and how work is changing, how collective actors deal with it, and the future of work from different disciplinary angles and at an international level, the contributors describe and analyse such issues and topics as the following: new forms of social protection and representation; differences in the power relations of workers and political dynamics; balancing protection of workers’ dignity and promotion of productivity; intersection of information technology and workplace regulation; how the gig economy undermines legal protections; role of professional and trade associations; workplace conflict management; lay judges in labour courts; undeclared work in the informal sector of the labour market; work incapacity and disability; (in)coherence of the work-related case law of the European Court of Justice; and business restructurings. Derived from a major conference held in Leuven in September 2018, the book offers an in-depth understanding of the changing world of work, its main transformations, and the challenges posed to classical employment relations theories and methods as well as to labour law. With its wide range of insights, analysis, and reflection, this unique contribution to the study of industrial relations offers an authoritative reference guide to scholars, policymakers, trade unions and business associations, human resources professionals, and practitioners who need to deal with the future of work challenges.
"Defines the challenges facing the movement and offers comprehensive prescriptions for its successful transformation." —The George Washington Law Review A valuable analysis of the rise, fall, and--hopefully—the revival of unionism in America. [The book] distills into readable form a mass of legal and empirical analysis of what has been happening in the workplaces of the United States and other industrial democracies. Most important, Craver has drawn a blueprint of what must be done to save collective bargaining in this century—must reading for scholars, lawmakers, and, especially, union leaders themselves. —Paul C. Weiler, Harvard Law SchoolAuthor of Governing the Workplace: The Future of Labor and Employment Law "A thoroughly researched, insightful, and readable look at why American unions have declined. . . . This is a very informative analyis of a vital topic, and it will have a multidisciplinary appeal to anyone interested in union- management relations. —Peter Feuille, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of IllinoisWhen employees at firms like Greyhound and Eastern Airlines walk out to protest wage and benefit reductions, they are permanently replaced and their representative labor unions destroyed. Every year, the threat or drama of a high-profile strike—in air traffic control towers, at Amtrak, or at Caterpillar—makes national headlines and, every year, several hundred thousand unrepresented American employees are discharged without good cause. During the past decade, employer opposition to unions has increased. Industrial and demographic changes have eroded traditional blue-collar labor support, and class-based myths have discouraged organization among white-collar workers. As the American labor movement begins its second century, it is confronted by challenges that threaten its very existence. Is the decline of the American labor movement symptomatic of a terminal condition? In this work, Charles Craver presents an incisive analysis of the current state of the American labor movement and a manifesto for how this crucial institution can be revitalized. Journeying with the reader from the inception of labor unions through their heyday and to the present, Craver examines the roots of their decline, the current factors which contribute to their dismal condition, and the actions that are needed--such as the recruitment of female and minority employees and appeals to white-collar personnel--that are necessary to ensure union viability in the 21st century. Craver thoughtfully discusses what labor organizations must do to organize new workers, to enhance their economic and political power, and to adapt to modern-day advances and to an increasingly global economy. He also suggests changes that must be made in the National Labor Relations Act. This book is essential reading for lawyers, scholars, and policy-makers, as well as all those concerned with the future of the labor movement.
Save Our Unions: Dispatches From A Movement in Distress brings together recent essays and reporting by labor journalist Steve Early. The author illuminates the challenges facing U.S. workers, whether they’re trying to democratize their union, win a strike, defend past contract gains, or bargain with management for the first time. Drawing on forty years of personal experience, Early writes about cross-border union campaigning, labor strategies for organizing and health care reform, and political initiatives that might lessen worker dependence on the Democratic Party. Save Our Unions contains vivid portraits of rank-and-file heroes and heroines, both well-known and unsung. It takes readers to union conventions and funerals, strikes and picket-lines, celebrations of labor’s past and struggles to insure that unions still have a future in the 21st century. The book’s insight, analysis and advocacy make this an important contribution to the project of labor revitalization and reform.
In a fresh and timely reinterpretation, Nelson Lichtenstein examines how trade unionism has waxed and waned in the nation's political and moral imagination, among both devoted partisans and intransigent foes. From the steel foundry to the burger-grill, from Woodrow Wilson to John Sweeney, from Homestead to Pittston, Lichtenstein weaves together a compelling matrix of ideas, stories, strikes, laws, and people in a streamlined narrative of work and labor in the twentieth century. The "labor question" became a burning issue during the Progressive Era because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself. Beginning there, Lichtenstein takes us all the way to the organizing fever of contemporary Los Angeles, where the labor movement stands at the center of the effort to transform millions of new immigrants into alert citizen unionists. He offers an expansive survey of labor's upsurge during the 1930s, when the New Deal put a white, male version of industrial democracy at the heart of U.S. political culture. He debunks the myth of a postwar "management-labor accord" by showing that there was (at most) a limited, unstable truce. Lichtenstein argues that the ideas that had once sustained solidarity and citizenship in the world of work underwent a radical transformation when the rights-centered social movements of the 1960s and 1970s captured the nation's moral imagination. The labor movement was therefore tragically unprepared for the years of Reagan and Clinton: although technological change and a new era of global economics battered the unions, their real failure was one of ideas and political will. Throughout, Lichtenstein argues that labor's most important function, in theory if not always in practice, has been the vitalization of a democratic ethos, at work and in the larger society. To the extent that the unions fuse their purpose with that impulse, they can once again become central to the fate of the republic. State of the Union is an incisive history that tells the story of one of America's defining aspirations.
This “breath-taking trip through the union-organizing scene of America in the 21st century” reveals the victories and unconventional strategies of a renowned—and notorious—militant union organizer (Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed) In 1995, in the first contested election in the history of the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney won the presidency of the nation’s largest labor federation, promising renewal and resurgence. Today, less than 7 percent of American private-sector workers belong to a union, the lowest percentage since the beginning of the twentieth century, and public employee collective bargaining has been dealt devastating blows in Wisconsin and elsewhere. What happened? Jane McAlevey is famous—and notorious—in the American labor movement as the hard-charging organizer who racked up a string of victories at a time when union leaders said winning wasn’t possible. Then she was bounced from the movement, a victim of the high-level internecine warfare that has torn apart organized labor. In this engrossing and funny narrative—that reflects the personality of its charismatic, wisecracking author—McAlevey tells the story of a number of dramatic organizing and contract victories, and the unconventional strategies that helped achieve them. Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) argues that labor can be revived, but only if the movement acknowledges its mistakes and fully commits to deep organizing, participatory education, militancy, and an approach to workers and their communities that more resembles the campaigns of the 1930s—in short, social movement unionism that involves raising workers’ expectations (while raising hell).
The world of work has changed and so have trade unions with mergers, rebrandings and new unions being formed. The question is, how positioned are the unions to organize the unorganized? With more than three quarters of UK workers unrepresented and the growth of precarious employment and the gig economy this topical new book by Bob Smale reports up-to-date research on union identities and what he terms ‘niche unionism’, while raising critical questions for the future.