Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

Sharing The Prosperity: Why We Still Need Organized Labor, Angela B. Cornell

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Today economic inequality is greater in the United States than in any other advanced nation. Bringing the minimum wage up to a true living wage is a crucial step forward, as are other employment-related benefits like broadening access to overtime and instituting paid sick leave. But employment statutes such as minimum-wage regulations cannot replace the broad-based benefits that come from organized labor. Unionization places the ability to influence what happens in the workplace directly in workers’ own hands, even as it creates institutions that can advocate for working people at the community, state, and national level. Under an effective labor-law …

The Union Idea In 21st Century America, Amanda M. Perry

Senior Honors Projects

This project explores the development of the “union idea” and its role in low wage labor markets in the 21st Century.

The "labor question" became a central issue in the early 20^th century because its solution seemed essential to the survival of American democracy itself: could a society based on wage labor provide a rising standard of living and full social participation for those workers? For a time during and after World War II the “union idea” - workplace democracy, working class solidarity, and the allocation of resources partly on a social rather than a market basis – became …

Judging Unions' Future Using A Historical Perspective: The Public Policy Choice Between Competition And Unionization, Michael L. Wachter

All Faculty Scholarship

In this paper I look at unions' future using a historical perspective and focusing on the period of union ascendancy as well as the past few decades when unions have been in decline. We know trends currently in place are unfavorable to unions. What conditions would be favorable? The rise of unions from the 1930s through the early 1950s was due to the convergence of a number of events - an economic policy that attempted to restrict competition beginning in the 1930s, the twin beliefs that labor markets were inherently noncompetitive and/or that individual workplaces were exploitative, and low union …