Business Commons^™

Organizing In The Nafta Environment: How Companies Use “Free Trade” To Stop Unions, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] These findings point to both an enormous challenge and a great opportunity for American unions. Clearly, under NAFTA and other free trade agreements more and more employers will feel emboldened to threaten to close the plant during organizing campaigns, and workers and unions will find organizing increasingly difficult. At the same time, unions have an opportunity to overcome these barriers to organizing if they commit enough resources to run large-scale, aggressive campaigns which mobilize the rank-and-file workers to build a union in their workplace, regardless of the intensity of the employer’s campaign.

Race, Gender, And The Rebirth Of Trade Unionism, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Dorian T. Warren

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] Diversity is not the enemy of solidarity. We contend that solidarity can, and must, be built among an ever-diversifying labor movement, nation, and world. The labor movement's very survival depends on it.

Obits For Labor Unions Are Premature, Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner

[Excerpt] The press recently declared the end of the labor movement. It reported on a major new study by Harvard economist Richard Freeman and Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin, suggesting that American workers would prefer cooperative relationships with management to traditional labor unions. Coupled with union membership at less than 16 percent of the work force and a new wave of far-from-pro-labor Republicans marching into Washington, many see this as definitive proof of labor's obsolescence. A more careful analysis, however, reveals that this is far from the truth.

Invisible No More: The Role Of Training And Education In Increasing Union Activism Of Chinese Home Care Workers In Local 1199seiu United Healthcare Workers East (Uhe), Ken Margolies

Ken Margolies

[Excerpt] In 2002 only a small number of Chinese home care workers represented by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East (UHE) were involved in their union. Language, unfamiliarity with unions in the United States, and, in some cases, undocumented immigration status inhibited participation in the life of the union by the growing number of Chinese home care workers. Despite these obstacles in 2007 perhaps the most active segment of the 60,000 home care workers in 1199SEIU now comes from the approximately 10,000 Chinese home care workers. Today, Chinese home care workers are consistently overrepresented at union (not just home care) rallies …

Introduction To The Pullman Strike And The Crisis Of The 1890’S, Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

The strike of Pullman carshop employees and the subsequent boycott that disrupted rail traffic throughout the territory west of Chicago in June-July 1894 marked the culmination of nearly two decades of the most severe and sustained labor conflict in American history. Yet until very recently little new scholarship has focused on the meaning of the Pullman strike and its historical context. By offering a close reading of contemporary perceptions of the strike and by examining the organizational and political continuities and discontinuities the Pullman conflict reveals, these essays resituate the strike in its historical context. They demonstrate that Pullman played …

The Composition Of Strike Activity In The Construction Industry, David B. Lipsky, Henry S. Farber

David B Lipsky

This study shows that strikes in construction have, by most measures, increased during the years since 1949, a period during which strike activity tended to decline in American industry as a whole. The authors demonstrate that this increase has resulted not from an increase in the number of wage disputes but from a growing number of jurisdictional strikes and the increasing severity of economic and union-organizing strikes. They also show that the number of strikes in construction does not vary significantly with the unemployment rate in that industry nor with the presence of wage controls, but both of those factors …

What Do Unions Do? Comment, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In What Do Unions Do?, F & M gather together an impressive amount of evidence showing that unions are on net beneficial for society. This book will not end the debate over whether unions are good or bad for society, but it represents a milestone that will surely influence the course of the debate in the future.

Les Relations Industrielles Mexicaines Et La Democratic Dans Le Context De L'Alena [Mexican Industrial Relations And Democracy Under Nafta], Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

Le Mexique est presentement en train de vivre une importante transition, qu'il s'agisse de son modele de developpement economique ou de son systeme politique. Sur le plan economique, le Mexique est passe d'un modele d'industrialisation sous une logique de substitution d'importations par des biens domestiques, modele forge dans les annees 30 et 40, a une strategie de developpement axee sur l'exportation et basee sur un modele neo-liberal. Sur le plan politique, le regime mexicain a subi de tres fortes pressions pour que son systeme, de type autoritaire, domine depuis plus de 60 ans par le Parti revolutionnaire institutionnel (PRI), fasse …

National Labor Strategies In Changing Environments: Perspectives From Mexico, Maria Lorena Cook

Maria Lorena Cook

[Excerpt] This essay will look at the evolution of Mexican trade unions' strategies in response to changes in their political-economic environment over a period of nearly twenty-five years. The purpose of the essay is to determine which factors proved most important in shaping trade union responses to environmental changes over time, and to note how the recent economic opening and regional integration represented by NAFTA have thus far affected and are likely to affect in the future labor unions' capacity to respond to such challenges. The Mexican case is of special importance in the Latin American context due to the …

From Transformation To Revitalization: A New Research Agenda For A Contested Global Economy, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] The revitalization perspective is hardly new. With deep roots in both labor movement history and industrial relations research, such work was marginalized for much of the postwar period both in union strategy and in the field of industrial relations. What is new is the rather sudden arrival of revitalization research in the mainstream of industrial relations along with a broader literature on contentious politics in a global economy (e.g., Klein, 2002; Delia Porta & Tarrow, 2004). This introductory article offers an overview of the revitalization perspective, deepened in relevance by contemporary struggles for democratic representation in the modern workplace …

Awakening The Giant: The Revitalization Of The American Labor Movement, Lee Adler, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] The key to the contemporary revival of the American labor movement is precisely a renewed mobilization of the rank and file. Based on our combined research and work in labor education and representation, we believe that large numbers of American workers, blue and white-collar, skilled and unskilled, professional, service and manufacturing, union members and non-members, are open and in many cases ready for expanded workplace and union participation. To be sure, mobilization by itself is not enough: also necessary are national union support, innovative and flexible strategies, and coalition building, and we highlight these as well. But expanded rank-and-file …

Globalization And The Logic Of Participation: Unions And The Politics Of Coalition Building, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

Global liberalization is driving a 'logic of participation', for firms and unions alike. Economic pressures drive managers to innovate across a range of possibilities, from outsourcing and union busting to work reorganization and labor-management partnership. Those same pressures, reflected largely through the strategic choices of employers, also force unions to innovate – from concession bargaining and cooperation to coalition building and international solidarity. Because employers are increasingly tempted by strategies that seek to weaken or marginalize unions, sustained participation for unions arguably requires a new period of activist mobilization. This article explores one significant component of renewed labor mobilization: union …

The Europeanization Of Labour: Structure Before Action, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

At national level, the development of effective labour movements has involved the interaction of two processes: the establishment of formal organizational structures, and the rise of rank-and-file pressure and protest. At European level, recent years have seen significant organizational developments; this article discusses the role of the European Trade Union Confederation and the emergent European Works Councils. As yet, however, there has been no parallel evidence of transnational labour protest, and indeed the obstacles are considerable. Nevertheless, institutional frameworks may create a 'political opportunity structure' which facilitates its emergence.

The Politics Of The Labor Movement Revitalization: The Need For A Revitalized Perspective, Lucio Baccaro, Kerstin Haman, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] Unions everywhere are struggling. Globalization, with its supporting neo-liberal ideology, encourages employers and governments to push vigorously against the constraints of employment regulation. Unions have to fight to protect past gains, resist decline and find new allies. To some extent, labor is always on the defensive in a capitalist economy, where ownership and economic decision-making lie largely beyond the reach of workers and unions. Yet the competitive pressures of today's increasingly global capitalism accentuate the pressure. Firms have new options and increasing mobility, far beyond those that most workers and unions can claim. One response is common to all …

External Pressure And Local Mobilization: Transnational Activism And The Emergence Of The Chinese Labor Movement, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

[Excerpt] This article elucidates connections between two strategies of transnational social movements—external pressure and local mobilization—and two potential outcomes—paternalism and psychological empowerment. Application of this theoretical framework to the nascent Chinese labor movement indicates that an overreliance on an external-pressure approach results in paternalism, thereby precluding psychological empowerment for aggrieved actors and potentially inhibiting movement growth. Conversely, strategies that relegate external support to a secondary role and privilege local mobilization are more likely to result in psychological empowerment. In this study, I argue that psychological empowerment is a prerequisite for the emergence of a worker-based movement in China. Many studies …

Paths To Global Social Regulation – What Can Americans Learn From The European Union, Lance A. Compa, Lowell Turner

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] For American proponents of global justice, social Europe appears distant yet inspirational, with all its weaknesses still a "vanguard" model for the social regulation of the global economy. We believe that a great deal can be learned by other countries, regions and the global economy as a whole from the ongoing experience of European economic and social integration. We also believe, however, that American experiences with NAFTA as well as with contemporary labor movement revitalization and coalition building offer positive lessons for Europeans and other actors in the global North and South.

As much as we admire the European …

Introduction To United Apart: Gender And The Rise Of Craft Unionism, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] The American Federation of Labor entered the twentieth century ensconced as the primary vehicle for the nation's organized workers. As such, the attitudes of the AFL toward women workers provided the basis for virtually all later attempts at organizing women. The cross-gender strikes that are the basis of this book illustrate both the ways in which men and women would move forward united and the ways in which they would remain apart. That both females and males could at times feel drawn together and at other times feel driven apart, and carry both those feelings into their actions and …

Narratives Serially Constructed And Lived: Ethnicity In Cross-Gender Strikes 1887-1903, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] The strikes narrated in this paper have illustrated different ways in which individuals' recognition of ethnic identity could interact with their recognition of gender and class identities. In each strike workers' identities developed along with the serial narrative of the particular strike situation. The use of Sartre's concept of the series helps us think about the many possible variations of class, ethnicity, and gender. Though Sartre planned to use his concept of series as a way to examine peoples' class identities, my employment of the concept broadens it to include other categories of identification as well. Using the concept …

Samuel Gompers, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] Samuel Gompers, founder and president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) for 37 years, was both extraordinary and exemplary of many skilled workers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

White Collar/Blue Collar, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] Examining the determinants of class for women and the ways men experienced gender will help clarify some of the ambiguous status of the clerical sector, but it will still not answer all of our questions. To understand the place of clerical work in the class structure, we need to examine more than just clerical work itself. A major argument of this book is that understanding the impact of clerical work on overall social stratification requires understanding stratification within the manual working class as well. The status of clerical work would perhaps be much clearer in contrast to that of …

‘‘Too Hard On The Women, Especially’’: Striking Together For Women Workers’ Issues, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

This essay draws upon a larger study of over forty strikes which involved both male and female strikers in the United States between the years 1887 and 1903. Here the focus of analysis is on those strikes which began with demands raised by women workers. The essay examines the nature of women workers’ demands, the ways in which cooperation with male co-workers altered those demands, and the affect that formal union involvement had on women strikers and their strike demands. Because the original set of case studies examines strikes across the United States, the strikes explored here also highlight a …

"Give The Boys A Trade": Gender And Job Choice In The 1890s, Ileen A. Devault

Ileen A DeVault

[Excerpt] It seems redundant (but is unfortunately not unnecessary) to say that this response emphasizes the gendered nature of the famed "manliness" of turn-of-the-century skilled workers. Davis Montgomery has described how "the workers' code celebrated individual self-assertion, but for the collective good, rather than for self-advancement." The process by which these skilled workers chose their jobs suggests an intermediate step: between the "collective good" of the union and the "self-advancement' of the individual stood the smaller collective unit of the male-headed household. The sense of what it meant to "be a man" thus not only holds the potential of explicating …

The Politics Of Work Reorganization: Pervasive Union Decline?, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] These are hard times for unions. There is currently a broad cross-national trend toward the decentralization of bargaining in industrial relations, which challenges established bases of union influence everywhere. The combined effects of intensified world market competition, new microelectronic technologies, managerial strategies to reorganize production, and the success and influence of Japanese production models are exerting great pressure on systems of industrial relations in Western Europe and North America; in many societies, unions are among the major losers in political realignments and industrial adjustment. Alongside wide-ranging discussions of competitiveness and the causes and consequences of trade and other economic …

Globalization, Participation, And The Renewal Of The Labor Movement, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

In dangerous times, in a post-Cold War political landscape in which a settled "New World Order" has yet to emerge, continuing globalization brings enormous challenges. For labor unions, the pressures are intense and have been well documented and analyzed. Yet globalization also brings new opportunities for enhanced participation, alliance-building, and labor movement renewal. Viewing the global economy as an opportunity as well as a threat, some unions are crafting innovative strategies to ride the new currents toward modernization, mobilization, and expanded economic and political influence.

Going Global, Michael E. Gordon, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] What power can counter the growing strength of MNCs and the forces of globalization? National governments have an important role to play, singly and together, as do international institutions of regulation such as the European Commission, the World Trade Organization, and the International Labor Organization (ILO). Equally important, we would suggest, is the countervailing power of modernized labor movements working actively at local, national, and transnational levels. Further, we suggest that in the current era, the renewal of national and local labor movements may in fact depend greatly on increased coordination with the labor movements of other countries. Transnational …

Conclusion: Markets, Strategies, And Institutions In Comparative Perspective, Kirsten S. Wever, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt If this had been another collection of country case studies, it would now be possible to map out the similarities and differences across the cases covered, possibly in a figure describing various IR-related issues by country. However, since this is a collection of different kinds of analyses with a variety of different focuses, the job of concluding this volume is not so simple. Nevertheless, in the very variety offered by the chapters in this volume, several themes emerge, most of which are at least implicitly, if not explicitly, clarified in the five substantive chapters. The chapters point up the …

Introduction: A Wide-Angle Lens For A Global Marketplace, Kirsten S. Wever, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] We hope in this volume to accomplish three things. First, we hope to meet the wide and growing demand in the IR community for a better understanding of industrial relations developments abroad. That is, we would like to help lift comparative IR out of its secondary status to a more prominent position within the field as well as reaffirm its centrality to other fields, such as comparative political economy and political sociology. Secondly, we aim to shed light on the specific comparison between other advanced industrial economies and industrializing countries, on the one hand, and the U.S., on the …

Political Insiders And Social Activists: Coalition Building In New York And Los Angeles, Marco Hauptmeier, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] Why have labor movements in New York City and Los Angeles changed so dramatically? And more specifically, why have the activist social coalitions that revitalized the labor movement in Los Angeles not played the same kind of role in New York? Our research persuades us that the relationship between .contrasting coalition types—political and social—is central to explaining the differences. Political coalitions refer to cooperation between unions and parties, politicians, and other social actors, focused largely on elections and policy-making processes. Social coalitions, by contrast, include labor and other social actors such as community, religious, environmental, and immigrant rights groups, …

Building Social Movement Unionism: The Transformation Of The American Labor Movement, Lowell Turner, Richard W. Hurd

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] In the United States, the renewed energy displayed by the labor movement is particularly promising. From organizing drives to strike victories to legislative campaigns, labor's renewed influence in the American political economy is clearly seen. A labor movement that was left for dead by many in the Reagan era has developed new leadership and innovative strategies for rank-and-file mobilization and political clout. In a global economy dominated to a large extent by American-based multinational corporations, the world needs a strong American labor movement. The goal of the new activists, young and old, who drive today's labor campaigns, is the …

Rank-And-File Participation In Organizing At Home And Abroad, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] We know that we need labor law reform. But it is also clear that this is not all we need; nor can we expect to achieve legal reform simply by electing Democrats. That strategy did not work in 1978-79 or in 1993-94, and it will not work in the future. In the face of inevitably powerful and well-organized business opposition, even the most well-financed and articulate lobbying campaign for labor law reform can fail. What was missing in 1978-79 and in 1993-94 and is urgently needed now is the pressure of a massive social movement, mobilized to transform and …