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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Prepared Statement For The National Mediation Board, Kate Bronfenbrenner Dec 2009

Prepared Statement For The National Mediation Board, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

Testimony before the NMB hearings on the proposed rule change to the RLA that recommend changing the voting standard from the majority of eligible voters to the majority of votes cast. The testimony summarized findings from the first ever national academic study of organizing under the RLA. Based on findings that showed that under the RLA standard greater employer suppression is correlated with lower turnout while under the NLRB standard both the union and the employer work aggressively for high turn out, the author argued for changing the voting standard to majority of votes cast.


Capital Mobility And Job Loss: Corporate Restructuring, Production Shifts, And Outsourcing, Stephanie Luce, Kate Bronfenbrenner Oct 2009

Capital Mobility And Job Loss: Corporate Restructuring, Production Shifts, And Outsourcing, Stephanie Luce, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] This chapter examines the impact of corporate restructuring and global outsourcing on employment in the Commonwealth and the shifts in production from workplaces in Massachusetts to other countries. In particular we focus on global outsourcing, the shifting of work from Massachusetts offshore to countries in Europe and Asia, and nearshore to Canada and countries in Latin America. Given the huge media attention that outsourcing and nearshoring have garnered, and the increasing trend they represent toward corporate restructuring and capital mobility with lasting repercussions for workers, families, unions, and communities in the Commonwealth, it is important to assess their relative …


What Is Labor’S True Purpose? The Implications Of Seiu’S Unite To Win Proposals For Organizing, Kate Bronfenbrenner Oct 2009

What Is Labor’S True Purpose? The Implications Of Seiu’S Unite To Win Proposals For Organizing, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] That labor is in a crisis cannot be questioned. While there may be some labor leaders who are content to keep ministering to an ever less powerful, shrinking base, there were few in the room that day that would disagree with the words expressed by SEIU International Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson on the opening panel, that the U.S. "labor movement is becoming dangerously close to being too small to matter." For the first time in decades, both organizing activity and union membership numbers have dropped precipitously. Where in past years unions had to organize 500,000 new workers just …


Significant Victories: An Analysis Of Union First Contracts, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Robert Hickey Oct 2009

Significant Victories: An Analysis Of Union First Contracts, Tom Juravich, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Robert Hickey

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] After two decades of massive employment losses in heavily unionized sectors of the economy and exponential growth of the largely unorganized service sector, the U.S. labor movement is struggling to remain relevant. Despite new organizing initiatives and practices, union organizing today remains a tremendously arduous endeavor, particularly in the private sector, as workers and their unions are routinely confronted with an arsenal of aggressive legal and illegal antiunion employer tactics. This vigorous opposition to unions in the private sector does not stop once an election is won, but continues throughout bargaining for an initial union agreement, all too often …