Labor Relations Commons^™

[Review Of The Book What Do Unions Do? A Twenty-Year Perspective], Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] The 1984 publication of Richard Freeman and James Medoff’s What Do Unions Do? was a landmark event in research on labor unions. It challenged existing negative economic conceptions of the role of unions by presenting a two-faced model of unionism in which the negative monopoly face of unions was counter-balanced by a positive collective voice face. For those in the labor movement, this book became a powerful source of academic support for their value to society and the economy. Among academics, WDUD was equally influential, as it encouraged a renewed, more data-intensive and methodologically sophisticated approach to research on …