Labor Relations Commons^™

Unions’ Impact On Firms’ Financial Decision Making: A Look At Right-To-Work Laws And Their Impact On Firms’ Leverage Decisions, Rachana Muvvala

CMC Senior Theses

I study the impact of unions on firms’ financial decision making by exploring their capital structure, specifically leverage. I test two opposing hypotheses to understand the relationship between unions and firms’ leverage: (1) the bargaining hypothesis which suggests that firms use higher leverage as a bargaining device with unions, and (2) the crowding-out hypothesis which suggests that firms have lower leverage because unions crowd out their debt capacity due to their perceived riskiness. Focusing on the 2007 to 2022 period, I examine right-to-work (RTW) laws, since they are exogenous shocks that decrease union power in five different states. Then, I …

Janus V. Afscme, Revisited, Benjamin Derek Morse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the days after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Janus v. AFSCME (2018)—a 5-4 conservative majority decision deeming the imposition of public union agency fees unconstitutional under the First Amendment—observers declared the end of public-sector unions. The Times called the ruling a “Sharp Blow ''[1] to organized labor. A Washington Post headline deemed the decision a “major blow”[1] [2] In the former piece, the Time’s Supreme Court correspondent wrote that “most of the labor movement’s strength these days is in the public sector. The [Janus] ruling contained a final blow for public …

A Labor Of Love: Extensive Exploitation Of Contract Music Workers, Malia Odekirk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Workers across the United States are reckoning with unfair labor conditions by unionizing and speaking out. Systemic undervaluing of many workers has created a climate of fear, hidden agendas, and pervasive labor misconduct. The pageantry/marching arts are no exception. As a cultural insider, I conducted interviews, had many informal conversations, and ran a large survey that uncovered how the marching arts exploit instructors extensively despite their experience, education, and efforts. A systematic proclivity toward late payments, abused contracts, egregiously low compensation, and free labor begs the question: how can programs continually mistreat instructors this way? I explore this question through …

“The New Pinkertons”: Anti-Union Consultants And Surveillance Tech Thwart Organizing, Jo Constantz

Capstones

In 2020, just 6.3% of U.S. private-sector workers were union members, despite the fact that 68% of Americans approve of labor unions, the highest since 1965, and nearly half of non-union workers say they would join.

After World War II, wage growth kept pace with GDP growth, but then began to diverge in the 1970s, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. After 1975, incomes of the bottom 90% rose more slowly than the economy as a whole, while incomes of the top 10% grew faster. The declining wage growth coincided with and is closely related to a drop-off …

The Frontier Of The Labor Movement: Latinas And The Longest Strike In Twentieth-Century Las Vegas, Maribel Estrada Calderón

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

After the mid-twentieth century, the American labor movement began to decline. Across the U.S., Union memberships and the rate of work stoppages decreased. In the hospitality-industry-driven city of Las Vegas, Nevada, however, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 more than doubled its membership. In 1989, the Elardi family purchased the Frontier Hotel and Casino and began to eliminate workers’ benefits. Led by the Culinary Union, workers went on strike on September 21, 1991, beginning one of the longest strikes in twentieth-century Las Vegas. Latina workers played critical roles in organizing and maintaining this successful, six-year-long battle against the Elardis. Positioning …

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 …

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 …

The Power To Protect Themselves: Gender, Protective Labor Legislation, And Public Policy In Michigan, 1883-1913, Amy Marie-Holtman French

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study provides a narrative of laborers' fight for legal protection through the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Since American law was one of the most important forces in shaping and limiting workplace reform, both labor unionists and reformers used the law to try to solve labor problems. Reformers employed the law to force state control over women and children, while labor unionists attempted to craft legislation to allow working men control over industrial relations.

Although society and the law treated men as independent agents, working men were not truly free. Common law designated workers as servants. Employers denied laboring …

Narrative Identity Within A Workers' Rights Organization, Emily Ann Hallgren

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research includes in-depth interviews and participant observation to examine the construction of narrative identity by the staff members and worker-members of a workers' rights organization in Northwest Arkansas. I seek to understand how the organization negotiates the broader cultural and institutional narrative identities with the personal narrative identities of the worker-members in a cultural context hostile toward undocumented immigrants. Further, I examine how the worker-members themselves both internalize and challenge the organizational, institutional, and cultural narratives about undocumented immigrant workers. Findings reveal that the staff members and the worker-members create different narratives for different purposes, though both are concerned …

Taking A Deep Breadth: The Rhetorical Construction Of Solidarity In The American Labor Movement, William O'Shannon Murphy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the rhetorical fragments in three case studies of the American Labor Movement constituting movement members in solidarity. Using Kenneth Burke's discussion of rhetorical substance, this project explores the possibilities for developing deep and broad forms of solidarity within the American Labor Movement. Rhetorical fragments of the Industrial Workers of the World, the United Farm Workers, and contingent faculty unionization efforts are explored.

I argue Burke's ideas of substance and identification provide a powerful lens through which we can examine the solidary practices of social movements. Through the examination of the case studies mentioned, I demonstrate that solidarity …

Labor And Media: A Strained Relationship, Mac-Z Zurawski

All Student Theses

The labor movement or union community of America has been in a steady decline for more than a decade. The 1950s saw the pinnacle of success with one-third of the U.S. workforce being unionized. Today only 8% of the private workforce is unionized. One way in which this decline may be perceived as more pronounced is through media alienation. According to journalists across the nation such as Philip M.Dine unions have been alienated by media and its type of union coverage. In this study, I analyze the way in which the New York Times portrays the labor movement during the …