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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement's Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd Nov 2015

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

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] As labor contests the dinosaur image it will find no easy answers. Hard work, careful assessment of options, and a willingness to take risks are all required. Without widespread experimentation and a significant reallocation of resources to organizing, extinction awaits.


Union-Free Bargaining Strategies And First Contract Failures, Richard W. Hurd Oct 2013

Union-Free Bargaining Strategies And First Contract Failures, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The objective of this paper is to investigate what happens during first contract negotiations, especially the unproductive ones that do not result in an agreement. Complete files were reviewed of 54 first contract cases collected by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department in 1993. Nineteen of these cases were updated during 1995 with follow-up interviews. Interpretation of the case studies was facilitated by a detailed analysis of 195 responses to a 1994 first contract survey conducted by the AFL-CIO Task Force on Labor Law. The original research was supplemented with a review of recent NLRB decisions on surface bargaining and …


Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard W. Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner Sep 2013

Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard W. Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The reawakening of the American labor movement under new leadership with new strategic orientations is a remarkable chapter in late 20thcentury American economic and political history. Given up for dead by so many at home and abroad, under relentless attack from American employers and with government supports disappearing, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) and a core of key member unions have re-emerged since the mid-1990s as prominent workplace, community and political actors. With both strategic reorientation and new local mobilization, these unions have fought to reverse decline and re-energize the movement. While the …


[Review Of The Book We Can’T Eat Prestige: The Women Who Organized Harvard], Richard W. Hurd Sep 2010

[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 Sep 2010

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 …


Beyond The Organizing Model: The Transformation Process In Local Unions, Bill Fletcher, Richard W. Hurd Sep 2010

Beyond The Organizing Model: The Transformation Process In Local Unions, Bill Fletcher, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The ideological foundations of traditional U.S. trade unionism have been called into question by world and domestic events. The post-World War II labor movement, founded on a social truce with capital and the apparent inevitability of a rising living standard, has hit a bulkhead-piercing iceberg of dramatic proportions. The global economy, economic restructuring, deregulation, and privatization have wrought destruction on U.S. unions. In the wake of this devastation, it has become common, even for union leaders, to define unionism in objectively negative terms (e.g., without a union, you have no protection from arbitrary management). As a movement, we have …


Revival Of The American Labor Movement: Issues, Problems, Prospects, Lowell Turner, Harry C. Katz, Richard W. Hurd Aug 2010

Revival Of The American Labor Movement: Issues, Problems, Prospects, Lowell Turner, Harry C. Katz, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The purpose of this book is to examine union revitalization efforts: to identify central developments, to analyze strengths and weaknesses in the new initiatives, and to assessprogress made and prospects for the future. We ask questions such as: Can union decline be reversed? Are there serious indications of revitalization beyond new leadership and publicity? What accounts for successes and failures so far, and what strategies have shown the most promise for future success? Can innovations in areas such as vocational training consortia contribute to labor movement revitalization? Are there ways to reconcile the contradictions between an "organizing model" of …


Unionization Of Professional And Technical Workers: The Labor Market And Institutional Transformation, Richard W. Hurd, John Bunge May 2010

Unionization Of Professional And Technical Workers: The Labor Market And Institutional Transformation, Richard W. Hurd, John Bunge

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] Established institutions that serve the interests of white-collar workers find themselves at a critical juncture. On the one hand they can foresee the potential to augment membership and influence. On the other hand, they confront the reality of reconfigured labor markets. Growth (and indeed survival) is contingent upon being able to adapt to the changing needs and interests of professional and technical workers. The combination of technological advances and alterations in the functioning of white-collar markets suggests strategic reconceptualization and institutional transformation. This chapter explores the attitudes of professional and technical workers toward their jobs and labor market organizations …


Collective Bargaining In The Era Of Grocery Industry Restructuring, Richard W. Hurd May 2010

Collective Bargaining In The Era Of Grocery Industry Restructuring, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] As UFCW international and local leaders know from first hand experience, there have been dramatic changes in the retail grocery industry over the past 15 years. Of most direct relevance to the collective bargaining environment, the absolute size of key corporations has increased and economic power in the industry has become more concentrated. Influenced by the spread of Wal-Mart's grocery operations, established companies like Kroger, Safeway, Supervalu, and Loblaw have pursued aggressive merger and market expansion strategies. Further complicating the situation has been the success of other alternative format grocers (such as Costco, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and BJ's), …


Organizing To Win: Introduction, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald, Ronald L. Seeber May 2010

Organizing To Win: Introduction, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald, Ronald L. Seeber

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The American labor movement is at a watershed. For the first time since the early years of industrial unionism sixty years ago, there is near-universal agreement among union leaders that the future of the movement depends on massive new organizing. In October 1995, John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda Chavez-Thompson were swept into the top offices of the AFL-CIO, following a campaign that promised organizing "at an unprecedented pace and scale." Since taking office, the new AFL-CIO leadership team has created a separate organizing department and has committed $20 million to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives. In addition, …


Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement’S Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd May 2010

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, …