Working Connections: Shop Floor Networks and Union Leadership

Abstract

Leadership is not a unitary phenomenon. While many variations are possible, leadership comes in at least two forms: Emergent leaders who represent those whom they lead and imposed leaders who do not derive their authority from those they lead. This is especially true of the workplace. Management leaders, while often selected from among workers, are imposed on them from above; in contrast, union leadership claims to emerge from and to represent those they intend to lead. Union leadership, however, has embedded within it an apparent contradiction. A labor union needs to be as effective in mobilizing workers as it is democratic in representing them. This article explores the microfoundations of representative and effective leadership by analyzing workplace social networks and shows that, in our setting at least, aspiring union representatives are situated to represent well while aspiring forepersons are not. Thus, the structures of informal social networks in work groups create a social fabric that allows unions to simultaneously be a “town hall” and an “army.”