Unionism and Income Inequality: A Comment on Rubin

Abstract

IN a recent article in this journal, Beth Rubin argues that unionism in the postwar United States has acted, in part, to increase income inequality among American workers.' Arguing from a neoMarxist perspective, Rubin suggests that American unions have been thrust into a contradictory role by the dynamic forces of class struggle. The unanticipated consequences referred to in the article's subtitle, then, are the sometimes divisive roles that unions play in representing the economic interests of their members as against the interests of the working class as a whole. Rubin interprets her empirical evidence, said to show a mixed effect of union density on income inequality, as supporting the proposition that union organization can itself be a source of divisiveness within the working class. Although we are not fundamentally unsympathetic to Rubin's general approach, we wish to raise some questions about her theoretical and empirical analyses and to present some additional empirical results that may cast further light on the issues raised. Given that Rubin has pointed to several important questions while characterizing her study as exploratory, we hope that the analysis presented here can be seen as contributing to