Labor Relations Commons^™

Coming Together: The Street Vendors Of Corona Plaza, Hannah Bottum

Capstones

Of New York City’s 20,000 street vendors, nearly all of them are immigrants, and most are unlicensed. This makes them vulnerable to harassment, fines, and even arrest. In Corona Plaza in Queens, vendors are coming together to push for change. This is their story.

De los 20,000 vendedores ambulantes de la ciudad de Nueva York, casi todos son inmigrantes y la mayoría no tienen licencia ni permiso. Esto los hace vulnerables al acoso, multas e incluso la detención. En Corona Plaza, en Queens, los vendedores se están organizando para impulsar el cambio. Esta es su historia.

Will Unions Get Out The Vote For Mayor In 2021?, Caroline Leddy

Capstones

Labor unions have played an important role in New York City politics for decades--with the 2021 mayoral election approaching, will they be able to motivate their membership to vote for the candidate they endorse, or will their members vote for whomever they want without taking into account who their union recommends? Link here: https://caroline-leddy.medium.com/will-unions-get-out-the-vote-for-mayor-in-2021-a85388813d2d

Fed Up, Desperate And Daring Enough To Unionize, Suzannah C. Cavanaugh

Capstones

This is a long-form story that outlines the hazards of restaurant work that predated the pandemic, among them wage theft, racism and sexual harassment. The story focuses on three restaurant workers pushed to unionize after Covid-19 worsened working conditions by cutting take-home pay and creating new safety hazards for employees. Legislation and employer resistance are stacked against them, but for many workers organization is the only solution.

Link to Capstone: http://fedup.tilda.ws/

Google Has A Labor Problem, And It’S Not Just Coming From Its Employees, Daniel Whateley

Capstones

For decades, technology companies have used temporary and contract workers to lower costs, creating a shadow workforce of thousands of indirect employees. That business model is now under threat.

In September 2019, 80 contract workers at Google’s Pittsburgh office voted to unionize with the United Steelworkers, the first time that white-collar tech workers in the U.S. have successfully organized with a union. These contractors are employees of HCL Technologies, an Indian multinational IT and consulting company that partners with Google around the world.

Tech and office workers face a different set of workplace issues from blue-collar and factory employees, which …

Contextualizing Filipina/O Experiences Through The Life And Lens Of Virgil Duyungan, Benjamin Huff

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper serves a dual purpose: to examine the world of Filipina/o immigrants and Filipina/o Americans during the 1930s in the Puget Sound region, as well as look at the life and death of Filipina/o labor leader Virgil S. Duyungan. Incorporating these two different aspects into one paper reveals how Duyungan’s experiences contextualize and highlight key issues of the greater Filipina/o community in the region at the time, such as racial identity and tensions, labor rights, corruption and exploitation, and socio-economic conditions. By utilizing a body of primary and secondary sources, such as books, journal articles, government documents, images and …

Analysis Of Union Safety: Determining Relationships Between Union Membership And Injury And Fatality Rates, Madelyn K. Street

Online Theses and Dissertations

In under two centuries the labor union transformed the American workplace, improving wages, benefits, employee engagement, and safety. In more recent years, the government and other organizations have caught up in focusing on safety. Countless studies have been conducted and determined that unions have a significant positive impact on safety compared to work environments absent of a union. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics data for 2006-2015, an investigation into the trends of union membership and injuries and fatalities reported in the United States was conducted. It was determined that there was not significant correlation between increased union membership and improved …

Two Paths To The High Road: The Dynamics Of Coalition Building In Seattle And Buffalo, Ian Greer, Barbara Byrd, Lou Jean Fleron

Ian Greer

[Excerpt] Labor-community coalitions are not a new concept. Unions approach such coalitions now, as in the past, as one way to enhance their bargaining power with an employer. Such coalitions are temporary and often issue-based. In recent years, however, some local labor movements have begun to look at coalitions in a broader way – as a means of improving their public image and building power in the political arena. This broad-based approach requires the development of coalitions for the longer run, not just for temporary expediency. This paper develops the notion of a high road social infrastructure as a way …

Labor And Urban Crisis In Buffalo, New York: Building A High Road Infrastructure, Ian Greer, Lou Jean Fleron

Ian Greer

With inequality growing and competitive market forces on the march, can unions play a constructive role in solving the problems of capitalist economic development? Should they try? In this study of coalition building in Buffalo, New York we find that regular procedures of problem solving involving multiple coalition partners – what we call a high-road social infrastructure – have developed in the city. We discuss the progression of union approaches to economic development, including in-plant and regional labor-management partnership, community coalitions and the creation of labor-led nonprofit organizations. In response to long-term economic and social crisis, a group of union …

Unionization And Income Inequality: The Impact Of Labor Union Participation On Income Inequality In The United States, Terence Finnigan

Honors Theses

Using Current Population Survey data in the period from 1996 -2011, this paper analyzes the relationship between labor union participation and income inequality in each of the 50 U.S. states. Since the 1970s the income gap in the United States has grown steadily and today the United States is the most unequal of all OECD countries (with the exception of Mexico and Turkey). In the past ten years alone, the disposable income for middle class families in the United States has shrank by a figure of 4 percent. In addition to rising income inequality, labor union participation has been on …

Organizing Opposition In The Teachers' Movement In Oaxaca, Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] This essay examines the continuing struggle of rank-and-file teachers to democratize the SNTE, a union of between 800,000 and one million members linked to the PRI. In particular, the essay analyzes the dissident movement's strategy of organizing to hold and win elections in union locals, and assesses the advantages and limitations of this strategy over a ten-year period (1979-1989). What were the implications of organizing within an official union for the movement's internal organization, demands, strategies, and ability to achieve its goals? This essay is divided into three parts. The first looks at the official union as an institution …

Improved Metrics For Workplace Dispute Resolution Procedures: Efficiency, Equity, And Voice, John W. Budd, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

Many debates surround systems for resolving workplace disputes. In the United States, traditional unionized grievance procedures, emerging nonunion dispute resolution systems, and the court-based system for resolving employment law disputes have all been criticized. What is missing from these debates are rich metrics beyond speed and satisfaction for comparing and evaluating dispute resolutions systems. In this paper, we develop efficiency, equity, and voice as these standards. Unionized, nonunion, and employment law procedures are then qualitatively evaluated against these three metrics.

Editor's Introduction (Review Symposium On Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes In Employment Systems), George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] During the past two decades there have been significant changes in employment systems across industrialized countries. Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems, by Harry C. Katz and Owen Darbishire, examines changes since 1980 in employment practices in seven industrialized countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and Italy—with a focus on the automotive and telecommunications industries. Katz and Darbishire find that variations in employment patterns within these countries have been increasing over the past two decades. The increase in variation is not simply a result of a decline in union strength in some sectors of …

Job Blackmail [Review Of The Book Fear At Work: Job Blackmail, Labor, And The Environment], Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] Ever since the establishment of environmental and workplace protections in the early 1970s, private employers have resisted further curbs on corporate conduct by threatening job destruction. The refrain has been that occupational health and safety standards wipe out existing jobs and make new ones impossible. In Fear at Work, Richard Kazis and Richard L. Grossman detail the use of this job blackmail to split trade unionists from environmentalists, making unnatural enemies of those who should be allies.

Breaking Ranks: On Military Spending, Unions Hear A Different Drummer, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] What remains to be seen is whether the labor movement's study of military spending will uncover the unions' material self-interest in reducing it, and in conveying that interest to the membership. For besides its general damage to the economy, which is now recognized even by many conservatives, the big, endless military buildup also threatens to inflict fatal damage on the trade union movement and its individual unions—not just indirectly but directly and concretely, in the form of fewer members, fewer contracts, fewer organizing victories, and less political power for working people. In effect, the Reagan Administration's plan to boost …

Another Look At Nafta, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

"Weak," "toothless," "worthless" and "a farce"—these were some of the epithets applied to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) labor side accord negotiated by the United States, Mexico, and Canada in 1993. Trade unionists and labor rights supporters were upset, first by the text of the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) when it appeared, then by early experiences after it went into effect on January 1, 1994. But those wanting progress on labor rights and standards in international trade should be careful of making some idealized “best” the enemy of the good.

[Review Of The Book We Can’T Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard], Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] In 1988 the fifteen-year campaign to organize office and laboratory workers at Harvard University ended with an NLRB election win. We Can't Eat Prestige is the most comprehensive examination to date of this compelling story, offering new detail and sufficiently bold assertions to re-ignite a smoldering debate about what this victory means for the future of unions. The author is a highly regarded journalist with thirty years of experience reporting on labor issues. Predictably, the book is extraordinarily well written, weaving a fascinating story of the union's evolution.

Organizing And Representing Clerical Workers: The Harvard Model, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The private sector clerical work force is largely nonunion, simultaneously offering the labor movement a major source of potential membership growth and an extremely difficult challenge. Based on December 1990 data, there are eighteen million workers employed in office clerical, administrative support, and related occupations. Eighty percent of these employees are women, accounting for 30 percent of all women in the labor force. Among private sector office workers, 57 percent work in the low-union-density industry groups of services (only 5.7 percent union) and finance, insurance, and real estate (only 2.5 percent union). With barely over ten million total private …

Wege Zur Transformation Gewerkschaftlicher Organisationsstrukturen, Martin Behrens, Richard W. Hurd, Jeremy Waddington

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] Bei einer länderübergreifenden Betrachtung erweist sich die Neubelebung der Arbeiterbewegung als ein komplexer Prozess des Wandels, der je nach soziopolitischem und ökonomischem Kontext variiert.Zwar lassen sich zahlreiche, vielfältige Gewerkschaftsstrategien und Ergebnisse beobachten, aber dennoch sind in den meisten der untersuchten Länder (Deutschland, Italien, Spanien, Großbritannien, USA) verschiedene Formen der strukturellen Anpassung, wie Zusammenschlüsse und Übernahmen, sowie eine „Rationalisierung“ der internen Gewerkschaftsstrukturen übliche Elemente der Revitalisierungsbemühungen. Auch wenn viele Ansätze zur Veränderung der Gewerkschaftsstrukturen auf der Strecke blieben, so bleiben doch noch eine Reihe von Fällen bei denen Reformen zu den positive Ergebnissen führten,welche die Arbeitnehmerschaft dringend benötigte.

The Evolution Of Strategic And Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns In The 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich

Kate Bronfenbrenner

"With the refocusing of attention of the labor movement on organizing, an increasing number of scholars have been directing their research toward the nature and practice of current union organizing efforts. These scholars have begun updating a literature that had grown sorely out of touch with the organizing experience of America’s unions and have provided the foundation for a more sophisticated understanding of the organizing process. While we applaud this resurgence in organizing research, there has not been a comparable resurgence in research on collective bargaining…"

The Failure Of Organizing, The New Unity Partnership And The Future Of The Labor Movement, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The New Unity Partnership (NUP) has stirred up a firestorm of controversy in union circles. Its inception can be traced to the July 4th holiday in 2003 when five national union presidents gathered for a candid private discussion about the future of the labor movement. The motivation for the summit was concern about the collective inability of unions to reverse their fading fortunes. At this and subsequent meetings the unions considered structural and strategic options to promote union growth, ultimately committing to a form of mutual aid pact to pool resources for coordinated organizing initiatives and to support each …

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement’S Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] But the increased effectiveness of labor's political activities has not resulted in major improvements legislatively, and now there is a hostile President who opposes nearly every aspect of the union policy agenda. The promise for the future lies in the demonstrated ability to mobilize at the grassroots. But there are recent signs that national unions are breaking ranks and pursuing narrow self interest. The USWA joined with the steel industry to persuade the Bush administration to restrict imports, and even hinted at a possible endorsement for his reelection in 2004 (Murray). The UMWA has praised the president's energy policy, …

Steward Training In The Construction Industry: The United Brotherhood Of Carpenters And Joiners Of America Faces The Challenge, Jeffrey Grabelsky

Jeffrey Grabelsky

[Excerpt] This article examines the development and delivery of the Carpenters union national construction steward training program. It describes the collaboration of the union and Cornell University in the design of the curriculum and the use of a train-the-trainer model in the delivery of the steward program in construction locals throughout the United States and Canada. Finally, it evaluates the effectiveness of the program in relation to the transfer of knowledge to participating stewards.

Fanning The Flames (After Lighting The Spark): Multi-Trade Comet Programs, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Adam Pagnucco, Steve Rockafellow

Jeffrey Grabelsky

[Excerpt] The COMET (Construction Organizing Membership Education Training) is an educational program utilized by building trades unions to generate rank and file support for organizing new members. Since 1996, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has been sponsoring COMET training in multi-trade settings for its fifteen affiliates. Between 1997 and 1998, the Department undertook a systematic evaluation of its multi-trade COMET programs to determine their impact on attitudes toward organizing as well as on the nature and extent of organizing activities. This article summarizes the lessons the Department learned. Among other conclusions, the evaluation reaffirmed that COMET …

Serving The Public Interest: Preventing Double-Breasting In The Construction Industry, Jeffrey Grabelsky

Jeffrey Grabelsky

Excerpt] But the immediate question I am addressing is how the practice of double-breasting undermines the stability of collective bargaining in the construction industry. The simple answer is that it is not exceedingly difficult for a unionized contractor to operate a double-breasted nonunion firm and, given the increasingly intense competitive pressures to cut labor costs (given rising land and material costs), employers have a strong incentive to double-breast. To the extent unionized contractors have pursued that business strategy, how has it impacted the system of collective bargaining in the construction industry?

Heroes Of New York, Jeffrey Grabelsky

Jeffrey Grabelsky

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of Strategic And Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns In The 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Tom Juravich

Kate Bronfenbrenner

"With the refocusing of attention of the labor movement on organizing, an increasing number of scholars have been directing their research toward the nature and practice of current union organizing efforts. These scholars have begun updating a literature that had grown sorely out of touch with the organizing experience of America’s unions and have provided the foundation for a more sophisticated understanding of the organizing process. While we applaud this resurgence in organizing research, there has not been a comparable resurgence in research on collective bargaining…"

The Steward’S Role In Bargaining, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Bargaining a new contract is one of the biggest events in the life of a union, and one that offers stewards many opportunities to build a stronger organization. For many stewards, though, the bargaining process consists of responding the three big questions from the members.

Communicating Across Cultures, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Communication is the key to so many things a steward does, and good communication skills are something experienced stewards develop. But even experienced stewards have special challenges when the communication is between people of different cultures.

Working It Out, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Every steward knows that it’s almost always better to work out problems with management informally, without having to resort to filing a grievance. And ever steward knows that if you do have to file a grievance, it’s better to win it at the first step than have to go through the headaches that come with moving higher up the food chain, or, even worse, risk leaving things in the hands of an arbitrator.

Time Management For Stewards, Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] Too much to do? Too little time to do it? Stewards face that problem every day – and the smart ones do something about it. It’s called time management.