Union Decline Research Articles

Theoretical Generality, Case Particularity: Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Trade Union Growth and Decline

Theoretical Generality, Case Particularity: Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Trade Union Growth and Decline

A Further Note on Union Power in the Long Run

Kemp and Long (1987) showed that, in the long run, non-saving workers may be unable to improve their lot by controlling the effective supply of labour. Their proposition was interesting not least because it offered the germ of an explanation for the recent decline in unionism in some capitalist countries, notably the United States and Japan. However, the Kemp-Long analysis was conducted in terms of a simple model economy of the Solow-Swan type, with just one product, constant returns to scale and a constant savings propensity for capitalists. Since the appearance of their article, the possibility of long-run labour impotence has been reconsidered by several authors and it has emerged that an allembracing labour union might be able to do something for its members, even in the long run, if the production function is convex-concave, cf. Palokangas (1989), or if the union resorts to all-or-nothing offers, cf. Manning and Shea (1988), or if capitalists optimize over time, cf. Kemp and Long (198 9a, b). In all of the papers just mentioned, it is assumed that the wellbeing of workers depends on their consumption of the produced commodity only. However, labour economists typically assume that the wellbeing of workers also depends on the amount of leisure time available to them. The purpose of the present note, then, is to examine the implications of that assumption for the Kemp-Long problem. In all other respects, our specification of the economy is the same as that of Kemp and Long. It will be shown that if the workers' marginal rate of substitution of consumption for leisure is greater than the steady-state wage rate when the

America's number one problem: Democracy

People who do not vote are even less likely to be engaged in other responsibilities commonly associated with citizenship in a democracy. Meanwhile, widespread belief that politics — as currently practiced — favors special interests over the “common good” has alienated an ever-increasing proportion of the electorate. In addition, the decline of local political parties and labor unions, combined with a decline in active church membership, has reduced the number of traditional outlets for grass-roots action, resulting in an erosion of community values. In the face of growing diversity and fast-paced change, the challenge to democracy rests in the recognition of a linkage between private gain and the public good; the nation's future depends on it.

Employer Behavior in the Face of Union Organizing Drives

Using data from a 1986 survey of employers and a 1982–83 survey of union organizers, the authors investigate the determinants and consequences of employer opposition to union organizing drives. They find that strong management opposition, as evidenced by, for example, the filing of formal charges of unfair labor practices against management, was most likely when the firm had relatively low wages, poor working conditions, and supervisory problems; when the likelihood of union victory was uncertain; and when the potential union compensation differential—and thus the potential effect on firm profits—was high. Opposition by supervisors was particularly effective in defeating union drives. The authors conclude that firms' responses to organizing drives were consistent with the motive of profit maximization, and that management opposition has been an important determinant of the decline of unionization.

Is the U.S. unique in the decline of private sector unionism?

The U.S. is not unique in the decline of private sector unionism. Contrary to assertions of the “unique school,” unionism in the private sectors of Canada and Western Europe has also declined and for the same reason, structural changes in the labor market.

Arizona construction labor: A case study of union decline

Labor relations in the Arizona construction industry provide an interesting and informative case study of what occurs when unions push costs beyond what the market will bear. The industry was highly unionized, even including the homebuilding sector, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a series of strikes and major wage and benefit increases led one sector after another in the industry to turn to open-shop contractors. The construction unions and unionized contractors attempted to counter this move by agreeing to wage, benefit, and rule concessions, but the trend to open-shop work continued. Currently, the unions control only a small segment of the work with little prospect of improvement. Although special factors may have reduced union power more in the Arizona construction industry than nationally, developments in this state do indicate a probable decline in the national union share of work beyond what was found in the 1984 nationwide study.

Plant size and the decline of unionism

Declining plant size is shown to explain a significant portion of the recent decline in unionism, particularly in manufacturing. The paper also shows how to use the probit model to decompose the change in unionism into explained and unexplained components.

Employer Behavior in the Face of Union Organizing Drives

The direct role of employers in union organizing has long been a neglected part of the union organizing literature. In this study we examine the determinants and consequences of employer behavior when faced with an organizing drive. Our principal substantive findings are: - that there is a substitution between high wages/benefits/good work conditions/supervisory practices and tough management opposition to unionism. - that a high innate propensity for a union victory deters management opposition, while some indicators of a low propensity also reduce opposition. - that positive industrial relations raise the chances the firm will defeat the union in an election, as does bringing in consultants and having supervisors campaign intensely against the union. - that the careers of managers whose wages/supervisory practices/ benefits lead to union organizing drives, much less to union victories, suffer as a result. In general we interpret our results as consistent with the notion that firms behave in a profit maximizing manner in opposing an organizing drive and with the basic proposition that management opposition, reflected in diverse forms of behavior, is a key component in the on-going decline in private sector unionism in the United States.

Union decline: A view from Canada

Important changes are occurring in the Canadian unions’ political and economic environments. This paper argues that such changes may be detrimental to Canadian trade unions, given their structural and institutional situation. To support this argument, private-sector union and nonunion firms in Alberta are compared. This comparison uncovers some structural (union members’ employment patterns and union firm characteristics) and institutional (union services) attributes of unions. Combined with the politico-economic environments that Alberta unions have faced since the early 1980s, these attributes have led to a decline in union membership. Because these attributes are shared by many other Canadian unions, those unions may increasingly confront some of the same hardships currently plaguing their Alberta counterparts.

The Decline of Unionization in the United States: What can be Learned from Recent Experience?

The dramatic decline in unionization over the last decade is investigated in the context of a supply/demand model of union status determination using data from surveys of workers conducted in 1977 and 1984 along with data from the National Labor Relations Board on representation elections. It is concluded that the decline in unionization since 1977 is accounted for largely by (1) an increase in employer resistance to unionization, probably due to increased product market competitiveness and (2) a decrease in demand for union representation by nonunion workers due to an increase in the satisfaction of nonunion workers with their jobs and a decline in nonunion workers' beliefs that unions are able to improve wages and working conditions.

Changes in the structure of wages: The United States vs Japan

This paper examines changes in wage differentials by educational attainment and experience in the United States and Japan since the early 1970s. While educational earnings differentials have expanded dramatically in the United States in the 1980s, the college wage premium has increased only slightly in Japan. In contrast to the large expansion in experience differentials for high school males in the United States, the wages of male new entrants have risen relative to more experienced workers for both high school and college graduates in Japan from 1979 to 1987. Macroeconomic factors (increased openness, trade deficits, and labor market slack) and changes in institutional structures (the decline in unionization) are likely to have amplified each other in contributing to a tremendous decline in real and relative earnings of young less-skilled males in the United States in the 1980s. We further find that a sharp deceleration in the rate of growth of college graduates as a fraction of the labor force in the United States helps account for the much larger increase in the college wage premium in the United States than in Japan in the 1980s.

The Decline of Organized Labor in the United States

Michael Goldfield challenges standard explanations for union decline, arguing that the major causes are to be found in the changing relations between classes. Goldfield combines innovative use of National Labor Relations Board certification election data, which serve as an accurate measure of new union growth in the private sector, with a sophisticated analysis of the standard explanations of union decline. By understanding the decline of U.S. labor unions, he maintains, it is possible to begin to understand the conditions necessary for their future rebirth and resurgence.

The failure of unionism in Dublin, 1900

The election contests of 1900 in St Stephen’s Green and South County Dublin were covered in detail by newspapers throughout the British Isles and have been treated as a political watershed by more recent and scholarly commentators. This interest has had a partly personal and biographical inspiration since one of the unionist candidates for South Dublin was the agrarian reformer and junior minister, Horace Plunkett; but the significance, symbolic and actual, of these contests has been seen as extending beyond the participation of one prominent Edwardian Irishman. The defeat of two unionist M.P.s, Plunkett and Campbell, in a fairly static Irish electoral arena would in itself have been worthy of comment. But the association of these men with a constructive administrative programme for Ireland, combined with the fact of their defeat by dissident unionists, gave the contests a broader notoriety and a significance for policy formulation which they would not otherwise have had. With the benefit of hindsight it has also been suggested that the repudiation of Plunkett and Campbell was a landmark in the gradual decline of southern unionism in Ireland. For, though South Dublin briefly returned to the unionist party between 1906 and 1910, the defeats of 1900 effectively marked the end of unionism as a significant electoral movement outside Ulster. After 1900, as the historian W.E.H. Lecky observed, ‘Ulster unionism is the only form of Irish unionism which is likely to count as a serious political force’.

Labor's Decline

Review of An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism by Kim Moody.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Welfare Expenditures and the Decline of Unions

To what extent has the increased supply by government of certain union-like services reduced the demand for union membership and thereby contributed to the decline in trade union density? The existing empirical evidence is meager and conflicting. The puropse of our paper is to reexamine the government substitution hypothesis, specifically with respect to the relationship between government welfare spending and union density. We test the hypothesis with time-series data using three alternative models of union growth. The advantage of this approach is that it will permit an assessment of how sensitive the results are to both specification and sample period changes. In all, we find the time-series evidence of a negative welfare effect on union density to be mixed. Copyright 1989 by MIT Press.

Union Decline and the Political Demands of Organized Labor

With the acceleration in the rate of U.S. union membership decline since 1970, organized labor has issued legislative demands for redistributing wealth and for protecting unions as organizations. Yet research on labor political action has de-emphasized not only the development of labor's legislative agenda, but also the forces, such as socioeconomic status and class conflict, which cause diverse occupational and industrial sectors of unions to issue different legislative demands. Analysis of resolutions passed at the 1981-87 AFL-CIO conventions shows that declining and/or predominantly white, male unions in construction and manufacturing tended to issue organizational legislative demands, while growing, service-industry unions with large minority and women memberships tended to issue redistributive legislative demands. The findings suggest that unevenness in class conflict across unions affects which unions issue organizational demands and that inter-union diversity in socioeconomic status affects which unions issue redistributive demands.

Construction doublebreasted operations and pre-hire agreements: Assessing the issues

Labor relations in the construction industry are conducted under a legal framework that is both different and more favorable to unions than is that in industry generally. Thus, construction employers are more subject to challenge than those in other industries if they operate both union and nonunion subsidiaries; construction unions, but not those in most other industries, may enter into agreements before anyone is hired (“pre-hire agreements”), require employees to join unions after ten days of employment instead of thirty, and require the contractor to notify them of job openings. Despite these advantages, construction unions represented only 22.2 percent of all construction workers in 1987, down from 40.1 percent in 1973, while nonunion, or “open shop,” construction accounted for more than 70 percent of the construction dollar volume as early as 1984. Attempting to overcome these trends, the construction unions have sponsored legislation in the current and last two congresses which would outlaw “doublebreasting,” i.e., one company owning both unionized and open shop subsidiaries, eliminate any restrictions on pre-hire agreements, and have the effect of forcing thousands of construction workers into unions regardless of their wishes. This article examines the reasons for the decline of construction unionism, analyzes the proposed legislation, discusses its probable impact, and concludes that it is lacking in justification for the common good.

Obstacles to Unionization in High-Tech Industries

Explanations for the difficulty faced by unions in their attempts to organize workers in high-tech firms in the Sunbelt are examined. We located our discussion within the theoretical debate regarding the decline of unions in the United States. Our focus is on 125 workers in two high-tech firms in a large Texas city. Based on survey data, personal interviews, and field observations, we describe the work and nonwork experiences of employees as they relate to the unionization process. We argue for a multicausal explanation for the lack of unionization. An authoritarian work environment, disorganized work lives, and an antiunion political climate combine to make unionization an unlikely alternative for these workers, despite the fact that they are not inherently antiunion in their attitudes.

British trade union membership, density and decline in the 1980s: a research note

This article is concerned with British trade union membership statistics. It provides three different estimates of trade union density and considers their meaning and significance. It also assesses the reliability of union membership figures, and finally it provides fresh data on the unemployed membership of trade unions.

Social Progress After the Age of Progressivism: The End of Trade Unionism in the West

This essay is about trade unions, an institution that arose to play an important part in relation to the social progress characterizing much of the present century and that served as an important reference point for several varieties of normative progressivism. The past two decades of social progress in the most prosperous established nations appear to be rendering the institution obsolete. The objective of the paper is to reject all progressivist interpretations of this trend -- neither condemning the development as a regressive obstacle to progress nor welcoming it as a normal part of the developmental process. The aim is to inquire anew into the historical project of trade unions and the interplay between this project and the processes of social progress, past and prospective. The analytical thesis is that the institution has been multi-dimensional, serving in one of its dimensions as an important political response to social progress. The normative problem is whether the unions' political contribution to a socially conscious political democratization can be revived or transferred, when the unions' constitutive adaptations to past stages of social progress appear to be failing so badly in the present. After a brief overview designed to show that analytical awareness of social progress has historically been linked to critical politically-minded theoretical currents as well as to progressivist theories and that it has been the ideology-process that has tended to smudge this distinction, we briefly outline three alternative progressivist approaches to unionism. Next comes a review of the contemporary state of the problem and a proposal for an analytical approach that avoids the holistic errors of progressivist analyses and lets the political issues be properly posed. In this approach, unions are situated in the context of labor regimes, an historical concept that highlights the dual character of unions, between social progress and political constitution. The contemporary decline of unions is then analyzed in relation to both levels of analysis. The political dimension poses questions of strategy for unions, and the study closes with a critical assessment of strategic alternatives generated by the progressivist alternatives. The conclusion is skeptical and political rather than programmatic, but that illustrates the social-theoretical point of the exercise. The demise of progressivism does not automatically condemn either its contributions to social theoretical analyses of social progress or its political projects.