Immigration, organization, and the Great recession: structural change or continuity?

Abstract

Catron’s comment extends our 2009 ASR article, “Hispanics and Organized Labor in the United States, 1973 to 2007,” by analyzing CPS data through the Great Recession. He finds that Hispanic immigrants’ odds of union membership declined relative to nonimmigrant whites between 2007 and 2009, and that certain Hispanic immigrant subcategories displayed increased odds of leaving union jobs during the recent recession. Catron interprets these results as revealing a strong business cycle component to the more general relationship between immigrants and labor organizing that we report, and suggests his findings partially undercut “the hopes of those who view immigrants as the key to organized labor’s future and organized labor as the key to immigrant prosperity” (p. 315).