After the Organizing Ends: Workers, Self-Efficacy, Activism, and Union Frameworks

Abstract

Because union organizing is commonly studied as a single event rather than the beginning of a process, little is understood about how union organizing strategies continue to affect workers after campaigns end. In this article, I analyze interviews with workers organized by two union campaign strategies, the “comprehensive campaign” and the “blitz,” which differ significantly in the degree of participation they foster among the rank and file. I apply Carole Pateman's (1970) participatory democracy theory and Erving Goffman's (1974) framework analysis to understand the meanings workers invoke to understand the campaigns and their relations to the unions. By looking at three stages within these two union organizing processes, I examine the ways that worker activism diffuses after the campaigns and across organizations.