Union Decline Research Articles

Worker Voice in America: Is There a Gap between What Workers Expect and What They Experience?

This article is the fifth in a series to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the ILR Review. The series features articles that analyze the state of research and future directions for important themes this journal has featured over many years of publication. The decline in unionization experienced in the United States over the past 40 years raises a question of fundamental importance to workers, society, and the field of industrial relations: Have workers lost interest in having a voice at work, or is there a gap between workers’ expectations for a voice and what they actually experience? And if a “voice gap” exists, what options are available to workers to close that gap? The authors draw on a nationally representative survey of workers that both updates previous surveys conducted in 1977 and 1995 and goes beyond the scope of these previous efforts to consider a wider array of workplace issues and voice options. Results indicate that workers believe they should have a voice on a broad set of workplace issues, but substantial gaps exist between their expected and their actual level of voice at work. Nearly 50% of non-union workers say they would vote for a union, compared to approximately one-third in the two prior national surveys, which points to continued interest in unions as a voice mechanism. Additionally, the authors find significant variation in the rates of use of different voice options and workers’ satisfaction with those options. The results suggest that a sizable voice gap exists in American workplaces today, but at the same time, no one voice option fits all workers or all issues.

Collective wage bargaining under strain in northern European construction: Resisting institutional drift?

Internationalization, trade union decline, enforcement problems and rising self-employment all strain the effectiveness of collective wage bargaining arrangements in northern European construction. We examine Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK, and show that these strains have pushed trade unions to seek assistance from the state to stabilize wage regulation, but with results that vary according to employer strategies and the power balances between the actors. While Denmark and the UK have barely introduced any state support, Norway has followed the Netherlands and Germany in introducing legal mechanisms for extension of collectively agreed minimum wage terms. The country studies suggest that state assistance alleviates some of the strain, but does not reverse the trends, and the comparison indicates that both institutional innovation and reorganization may be required if wage bargaining is not to drift into different functions.

Trade union decline, deindustrialization, and rising income inequality in the United States, 1947 to 2015

The steady rise of income inequality in the United States coincides with trade union decline and structural changes to the economy, but prior studies do not consider whether these phenomena interact in ways that magnify inequality. Drawing on institutional and market accounts of inequality, the author develops the argument that trade union decline, occurring within the context of deindustrialization and the offshoring of routinemanufacturing jobs, creates more profound distributional effects than these factors would create in isolation. This argument is tested (net of other important determinants of income inequality) using time-series regression models and national-level data from 1947 to 2015. Results support the proposed interaction effects, suggesting that a thorough understanding of inequality and social stratification must consider not only institutions and markets, but how they interact. The results also suggest that inequality is driven by financialization, public sector retrenchment, and unemployment, but not necessarily by technological change.

Interesting Historical Perspective: What Really Caused Union Decline

In a lengthy paper for the left‐leaning think tank the Center for American Progress, author David Madland refers to work by two academics who found that “an even bigger reason for the decline of unions than corporate resistance to organizing drives is that unionized companies in the US have added fewer jobs over time than their nonunion counterparts.”

The Changing Nature of Work.

The article focuses on workplace hygiene, public health, and the impact of technological, economic, and social changes on employment and health. It comments on the decline in labor unions and how existing labor unions use their bargaining power to resist cuts to benefits such as health care. It talks about how artificial intelligence and robotics could soon make most labor and jobs redundant. It mentions the need for legislation to protect workers and use technology to improve human welfare.

Determinantes del declive sindical en Estados Unidos

This article examines the decline of unions in the United States from 1980 to 2015, using the unionization rate as the main indicator to measure how much of the employed work force is unionized. The analytical framework used classifies the most important factors of this decline into the cyclical, the structural, and the political-institutional. In addition, the author contrasts the U.S. trends in union density with those of other developed countries, noting an important divergence. The decline in the U.S. was determined more by the institutions that regulate the labor system than by economic globalization.

Trade union renewal and ‘organizing from below’ in Germany: Institutional constraints, strategic dilemmas and organizational tensions

Organizing is widely discussed as a remedy for continued union decline. Originating in the liberal market industrial relations systems of the Anglo-Saxon world, the ‘organizing’ strategy is increasingly discussed in countries like Germany, traditionally known for consensual industrial relations and multi-employer collective bargaining. To study whether and how ‘organizing’ is translated in union organizations operating in a different institutional context, we study the link between organizational transformation and institutions in IG Metall in Germany, which was been influenced by the American Service Employees International Union (SEIU). We find a German variety of organizing rather than a mere copying of ‘best practice’: the union’s approach is based on institutional and organizational structures as a resource and constraint.

Talking Trash

Talking Trash Steven Stoll (bio) Nancy Isenberg. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in America. New York: Viking, 2016. xvi + 480 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $28.00. J.D. Vance. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis. New York: HarperCollins, 2016. 264 pp. $27.99. One could say of the United States in the twenty-first century that there has never been a society so divided by class yet in such denial about it. The word class is rarely uttered either by journalists or politicians. Though it merely describes people of the same income and social status, class cannot be separated from the history of capitalism and its creation of owners and laborers. Americans once acknowledged the fact. During the labor movement that extended from the end of the Civil War to the 1970s, workers referred to themselves as workers or employees, not as the associates or partners of their wage-suppressing bosses. They defined themselves in opposition to capitalists, a term reserved for those who invest in the means of production and hire labor. Unions like the United Mine Workers of America and the Industrial Workers of the World engaged in defensive class warfare, enduring unprecedented violence and legal repression through the First World War. The language of class began to fade after the Second World War. Leaders in politics and business put forth the notion that all Americans are capitalists with an equal stake (if not an equal share) in the social system. They confuted consumption with freedom and set this conception of the United States against the austerity of the Soviet Union. Conservative economists like Milton Friedman and James McGill Buchanan asserted that when owners and investors pursued their interests they served the common good. Daniel J. Boorstin published The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973), in which he excised class conflict from the nation's past. Since that time and the decline in unionization that followed, the differential in income and wealth between those at the top and bottom has diverged to the point that even conventional economists say it risks financial collapse. Two recent books reintroduce class into the discussion of American history and our present crisis. In White Trash: The 400-Year Untold Story of Class in [End Page 345] America, Nancy Isenberg speaks to Boorstin's milquetoast complacency and to all previous historians who sought to diminish or ignore the deep inequalities between whites throughout the history of the United States, in colonial ventures, the Civil War, and in reality TV. J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis is equally compelling but in a different sense. It's an up-from-poverty tale that occludes the history, perpetuation, and destructiveness of class conflict. White Trash is a pageant of the dispossession and hatred that poor whites have endured since the founding of Jamestown. They have been known as waste people, crackers, hillbillies, and mudsills (a word for the loadbearing columns or posts sunk into the muck at the bottom of a structure). Isenberg has a great eye for stories that illustrate moments in the development of the idea she follows—that poor whites built the British colonies and the United States but endured constant revulsion at their imposed condition, whether we observe them closing ranks around Nathaniel Bacon in 1676 or Jimmy Carter in 1976. The book's central point is not surprising, but its vibrant writing and nimble analysis perform a much-needed service by wrapping in a single package the pieces of a scattered story. The book's power lies in its overall effect, the consistent historical presence of a people always visible but misunderstood. They served as soldiers enlisted from the distant provinces to fight the territorial wars of the United States, as well as the nation's forgotten farmers and miners. They were the beneficiaries of the New Deal and Great Society and later opponents of those very policies. They showed violent hostility to African-Americans and Native Americans, yet were themselves abused and maligned. The final chapters are the strongest, where we learn about the origins of the trailer park, how...

Organizing the State: The “New Labor Law” Seen from the Bottom-Up

U.S. labor and employment law is broken. Evidence of the decay can be gleaned from the steep decline in unions and collective bargaining, inadequate employment protections, ineffective enforcement of many employment laws, and correlative increases in income inequality and unstable work. Recent scholarship has argued that out of the ashes a “new labor law” potentially rises, where labor, management, and state representatives co–negotiate new rights and enforcement procedures for workers, an arrangement known as “tripartism.” Is this wishful thinking? To find out, we report on original data collected through an ethnographic study of inter–state (side–to–side) and state–society (up–and–down) collaboration in Chicago. We identify pervasive and important collaborative partnerships in both arenas, including practices that may indeed undergird a budding tripartism in the United States. Much of the work, however, heavily relies on the initiative and volition of unique actors we call “nodal agents” — not the law. Moreover, some of the state–based nodal agents central to side–to–side and up–and–down collaboration derive their authority from inherently unstable political appointments. To the extent the “new labor law” exists in Chicago, and likely elsewhere, it is a “relational labor law” that, because it relies on informal interpersonal dynamics, is inherently precarious. While our contribution is descriptive and explanatory, the findings strongly point to a need for more law, including civil service protections and nudges or even mandates for side–to–side and up–and–down collaboration. New enforcement agencies should also be structured as nodal agencies, i.e., institutions with legal mandates to collaborate up-and-down and side-to-side. Given the relative absence of employers from most of the collaborative activities we report — as well as from our study itself — further research should focus on the nature of management attitudes toward tripartite arrangements and the best ways to incentivize or compel their participation in the future.

Neoliberal Capitalism and Precarious Work: Ethnographies of Accommodation and Resistance by Rob Lambert and Andrew Herod

Reviewed by: Neoliberal Capitalism and Precarious Work: Ethnographies of Accommodation and Resistance by Rob Lambert and Andrew Herod Arne L. Kalleberg Rob Lambert and Andrew Herod, Neoliberal Capitalism and Precarious Work: Ethnographies of Accommodation and Resistance (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2016) This book addresses the increasingly important topic of precarious work, or work that is insecure and uncertain and in which risks are shifted to workers rather than employers or governments. Theory and research have established that the spread of neoliberal political-economic policies, associated with the [End Page 312] decline of unions and the growing imbalances of power in favour of employers over workers, underlie the transformation in employment relations from the standard employment relations of the 30-year period after World War II in the Global North to the precarious, often non-standard, employment relations that characterize both the Global North and South. This book assembles a collection of case studies that show the consequences of precarious work for workers in diverse contexts - such as sweatshops, day labourers, homeworkers, construction workers, and sugarcane cutters - and their varied ways of accommodating and resisting their precarious situations. The editors' introduction summarizes some of the definitional issues regarding precarious work and provides an overview of the main forms of nonstandard work arrangements (temporary and part-time work and independent contracting) and of the reasons why these have become more prominent in the past quarter century. They emphasize especially how spatial and geographical aspects of capitalism and neoliberal political-economic policies have led to the restructuring of work on a global scale and how this has impacted local workplaces and communities, a theme that is echoed throughout the volume. The book is divided into two parts. The first consists of six case studies that examine various forms of precarious work and illustrate the variety of ways in which people accommodate themselves to their precarious work experiences. These chapters also show the diverse strategies by which workers resist and protest their precarious situations, as they seek alternatives to unions, who are often reluctant to engage with precarious workers. Thus, the study of workers in unregulated factories in the clothing industry in the Fashion District in inner-city Johannesburg shows how international competition has weakened organized labour, making coalitions with faith-based organizations a more likely source of power. The chapter on immigrant industrial day labourers in Chicago in the mid-2000s examines a labour rights campaign that was done without union involvement. This accountability campaign was designed to shame the client company into transferring its temporary workforce from an abusive temp agency to a more ethical one. Another chapter looks at home-based work and provides examples of the new ways in which women home-based workers are organizing in Bulgaria and Turkey. These forms of organizing are different from traditional union or collective bargaining strategies, as they use non-union international linkages (such as with the Federation of Homeworkers Worldwide, women's movements, and consumer campaigns in Europe) to build solidarity. A chapter on the construction industry and labour subcontracting in China elucidates the culture of violence between subcontractors and workers. Its analysis of four construction sites shows how the labour subcontracting system (which is the single most important way of obtaining the labour needed by the industry) is leading to widespread collective action among workers, who are among the worst-paid in China today and are ripe for exploitation since most are not protected by China's labour laws. Another chapter looks at how the toxic pollution of air and groundwater generated by large steel corporations have led to social and economic insecurity in a South African community (Steel Valley, near Johannesburg). The authors' analysis links nature and capitalism by revealing how the marketization of nature driven by global corporations and ecological degradation deepens social and economic insecurity. They argue that transnational solidarity networks led by labour (such as sigtur - Southern Initiative on [End Page 313] Globalization and Trade Union Rights) and environmental campaigns ("ecological unionism") are needed to address the growing ecological crisis. The final chapter in the section examines how global ethanol corporations and export-oriented sugar policies are leading to greater concentration in the ownership of land and...

What Do Workers Want? The Shortfall in Employee Participation at the European Workplace

A shortfall in employee voice attendant upon union decline has long been forewarned. Data from the third European Company Survey is used to establish perceived shortfalls in employee involvement based on the responses of employee representatives in establishments where formal workplace employee representation is practiced. Among the main findings is that the desire for greater involvement in decision making is smaller where representation is via a works council-type apparatus rather than through the agency of a union body. Similar, albeit more pronounced marginal effects are associated with information provision, most notably where employee representatives are (a) 'satisfactorily' informed on a variety of establishment issues or (b) are asked to give their opinions/involved in joint decisions in the event of some major human resource decision. The latter results are robust to subsets of the data based on variations in trust between the parties and the perceived quality of the industrial relations climate, where there is an overwhelming desire for more participation in those circumstances in which management is adjudged uncooperative and untrustworthy. On net, it remains the case that a shortfall in employee participation is observed across all types of establishments in the sample and, by extension, it would appear to those without any workplace representation at all.

Organizing the State: The New Labor Laww Seen from the Bottom-Up

U.S. labor and employment law is broken. Evidence of the decay can be gleaned from the steep decline in unions and collective bargaining, inadequate employment protections, ineffective enforcement of many employment laws, and correlative increases in income inequality and unstable work. Recent scholarship has argued that out of the ashes a “new labor law” potentially rises, where labor, management, and state representatives co–negotiate new rights and enforcement procedures for workers, an arrangement known as “tripartism.” Is this wishful thinking? To find out, we report on original data collected through an ethnographic study of inter–state (side–to–side) and state–society (up–and–down) collaboration in Chicago. We identify pervasive and important collaborative partnerships in both arenas, including practices that may indeed undergird a budding tripartism in the United States. Much of the work, however, heavily relies on the initiative and volition of unique actors we call “nodal agents” — not the law. Moreover, some of the state–based nodal agents central to side–to–side and up–and–down collaboration derive their authority from inherently unstable political appointments. To the extent the “new labor law” exists in Chicago, and likely elsewhere, it is a “relational labor law” that, because it relies on informal interpersonal dynamics, is inherently precarious. While our contribution is descriptive and explanatory, the findings strongly point to a need for more law, including civil service protections and nudges or even mandates for side–to–side and up–and–down collaboration. New enforcement agencies should also be structured as nodal agencies, i.e., institutions with legal mandates to collaborate up-and-down and side-to-side. Given the relative absence of employers from most of the collaborative activities we report — as well as from our study itself — further research should focus on the nature of management attitudes toward tripartite arrangements and the best ways to incentivize or compel their participation in the future.

Union substitution effects of human resource management practices in South Korean workplaces, 2005–2013

This article explores the association between various workplace-level HRM practices and a decline in union strength using a unique longitudinal survey data-set gathered in South Korea from 2005 to 2013. It addresses the underlying theoretical mechanisms by which HRM programs substitute for the roles labor unions have traditionally played. Suggesting more nuanced theoretical implications about HRM practices and union decline, statistical analyses reveal that workplaces that have implemented HRM practices have unions with a weaker organizational base than those without such practices, but that certain HRM programs correlate with unions with a strong collective voice in management decision-making. This article identifies the new roles for unions in South Korea in the era of HRM.

The road to anomie: the rise and decline of public service unions in France

This article attempts to demonstrate that public service industrial relations in France are closely linked to a historical model that has its roots in the construction of the Republican system as early as 1880. The historical resilience of this model distinguishes it sharply from the one developed in the private sector which is much more related to the defence of the industrial working class. Public service unions emerged as a Left political force in the 1920s and still retain this function in the twenty-first century. Since 1946, civil service unions have developed a representation role of a political nature that challenges the political class. This article argues that the specificity of public service industrial relations is connected in France with a political conception of the employment relationship in the civil service. Therefore, new public management has failed to take root. However, unions are facing a serious crisis because they cannot curb the austerity policies pursued by both Right and Left governments. They have been forced to adopt a defensive strategy while civil servants are turning increasingly to the Far Right.

The Rise and Fall of Labor

Labor unions exist everywhere, but their strength varies widely by time and by place. It is widely known that levels of unionization have fallen from their peak in the advanced world, and our best evidence suggests that unions never attained these peak levels of influence in late developers. This paper reconsiders explanations of union strength with a view to accounting for these longitudinal and cross-sectional differences. I identify four broad accounts, but note empirical, conceptual, and methodological weaknesses in existing research. I marshal as-yet unused data from the first half of the 20th century, propose an improved measure of ordinary individuals’ disruptive capacity, and employ counterfactual exercises in an effort to improve upon past work. In panel regressions spanning the modern history of the labor movement, I find strong evidence for institutionalist and especially structuralist explanations of union success. The counterfactual exercises illustrate the primacy of the structuralist account. The loss of disruptive capacity explains a larger share of union decline in the advanced world than does the loss of enabling institutions, and the structural handicaps of late industrialization explain the majority of the gap in unionization between early and late developers.

The battle over flexibilization in post-communist transitions: Labor politics in Poland and the Czech Republic, 1989–2010

In post-communist transitions, given the steepness of union decline and the inheritance of rigid communist-era Labor Codes, a convenient way to compare the relative efficacy of organized labor is to assess its ability to contain the push for ‘flexibilization’ in the revision of labor regulations. This article compares Poland and the Czech Republic (1989–2010), where important differences emerged in revised Labor Codes in such areas as dismissals, fixed-term contracts, collective bargaining, and union rights. In all these aspects, Czech labor did significantly better in resisting flexibilization. The explanation rests on the evolution of a legacy union in the Czech Republic that was able to concentrate labor’s resources and coordinate with an electorally viable set of left parties to secure their backing for labor’s agenda. This was not possible in Poland given the deep divisions within organized labor and the shifting fortunes of left parties in a more volatile party system. The cohesiveness of labor and the viability of left parties do not explain variation in labor power everywhere. They do, however, jointly constitute a portable mechanism that enhances the strength of organized labor in post-communist countries and possibly even in late-developing countries marked by market reforms and democratic contestation.

Financialization, Technological Change, and Trade Union Decline

AbstractRecent research finds that financialization and technological change have had a variety of negative effects on labor, including reducing low-skill workers’ wages and increasing income inequality. In this article, I examine the effect on trade unions of one type of financialization, equity market development and one type of technological change, routine-biased technological change. I argue that we should conceptualize trade union strength in two dimensions: (a) the strength of their institutional structures, such as the degree of wage bargaining coordination and the degree to which firms can deviate from collective agreements; (b) the strength of their membership. Using data for 21 OECD countries from 1970 to 2010, I find a negative effect of equity market development on unions’ institutional structures, but not on union membership. Contrarily, I find that routine-biased technological change has a negative effect on union density, but an inconsistent relationship with the strength of unions’ institutional structures.

Interlock Globally, Act Domestically: Corporate Political Unity in the 21st Century

Long-term structural changes to the American economy, such as the decline of labor unions, the era of deregulation, and the decline of commercial banking and concomitant rise of investment banking, have led to scholarly debate over the extent to which the American business class is politically unified. At the same time, the increasing globalization of economic activity over the last half century has generated similar academic disagreement regarding a potential transnational business class and its implications for national capitalist unity. In this article, I present evidence supporting the view that as of 2006, the corporate elite were relatively unified both within the United States and transnationally. Furthermore, I find that the network mechanisms that facilitate this unity are largely transnational, indicating a shift in center of corporate class organization and the interests likely represented by corporate political action in the 21st century.

Trade union revitalisation: Where are we now? Where to next?

In this article, we review and assess research on the role of trade unions in labour markets and society, the current decline of unions and union revitalisation. The review shows three main trends. First, trade unions are converging into similar strategies of revitalisation. The ‘organising model’ has spread far beyond the Anglo-Saxon countries and is now commonplace for unions as a way to reach new worker constituencies. Thus, even in ‘institutionally secure’ countries like Germany and the Nordic countries, unions are employing organising strategies while at the same time trying to defend their traditional strongholds of collective bargaining and corporatist policy-making. Second, research has shown that used strategies are not a panacea for success for unions in countries that spearheaded revitalisation. This finding points to the importance of supportive institutional frameworks if unions are to regain power. Third, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, unions are building external coalitions with other social movements, including across borders, to compensate for the loss of power resources that were tied to national collective bargaining and policy-making. Research has shown that unions, even in adverse institutional contexts, can be effective when they reinvent their repertoires of contention, through political action or campaigning along global value chains.

The Twin Track Model of Employee Voice: An Anglo-American Perspective on Union Decline and the Rise of Alternative Forms of Voice

We present a simple framework for analyzing decline in union voice in the Anglo-American world and its replacement by non-union, often direct, forms of worker voice. We argue that it is a decline in the in-flow to unionisation among employers and workers, rather than an increase in the outflow rate, that accounts for this decline. We show how union decline is predicted by experience good and cost-disease models of trade unionism and is linked to specific institutional and policy constraints on union organizing in the Anglo-American world. We show how the co-existence of union and non-union forms of worker voice is predicted by transaction cost economics, while the growth in non-union forms of worker voice is aided by declining costs of employers ''making'' voice mechanisms. We draw on ''spurt'' theories of unionisation to help understand factors underpinning union decline, including falling costs of employer opposition to unionisation as density falls, as discuss possibilities for ''bottom-up'' growth in union-like forms of worker voice implied by ''spurt'' theories.