Labor Board Research Articles

A union's and university's responses to violence against a woman professor: Neoliberal restructuring, hypermasculinity, male privilege and hegemonic inequality

AbstractAlthough Eastern Canadian liberal arts universities are portrayed as progressive work environments that cultivate inclusivity and diversity, the corporatisation of these public spaces has transformed them from institutions that once encouraged pluralism and acceptance among all social groups to spaces that unevenly distribute privileges among faculty and students based on ascribed characteristics, social class, and adherence to cisnormative and heteronormative expectations. Under neoliberal reforms, universities and unions adopt their own policies and procedures that legitimate institutional power abuse over marginalised women Contract Limited Term (CLT) assistant professors. Using material evidence from complaints filed with a province's Human Rights Commission and Labour Board, this critical autoethnographic case study explores the institutionalised responses to a disenfranchised woman CLT's discrimination and harassment by a student, departmental chair, faculty and university staff. A theory of genocidal mobbing is developed to conceptualise the organisational processes and practices that maintain the status quo of white heteropatriarchy and disentitle women CLTs to safety, equality and fair representation by their unions. Genocidal mobbing is efficient, because misogynistic administrators only require weaponising one disgruntled student, and effective, because administrators utilise the most fatal and insidious of gendered narcissistic abuse: gaslighting. The current neoliberal climate within academia puts marginalised women faculty at increased risk of genocidal mobbing from those with institutional power and from students with ethnic/racial and/or economic privilege. This article illuminates the union's culpability in the genocidal mobbing of women CLTs disenfranchised by multiple marginalised intersectional identities. Implications for future research and on policy are presented.

Quickie Election Rules in Effect

The General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently issued a memorandum outlining the details of the labor board's new “quickie election” rules, NLRB Memorandum GC 24‐02, Guidance Memorandum on 2023 Updated Representation Case Procedures (December 8, 2023). Employers who had failed to appreciate the need for pre‐petition union avoidance strategies now have more reason to appreciate their value.

Will You Be a Victim of the Law—or Lethargy?

The one name that has immediately caught the attention of employers interested in maintaining union‐free status in the past year or so has been Jennifer Abruzzo, the current General Counsel for the NLRB. In this role, it is her responsibility to enforce the existing labor law. However, the power of the position also allows for initiatives to bring cases upon which the NLRB can change existing law. Depending on the political party in power and the majority control of the labor board, such changes in the law can be pro‐employer or pro‐union. In recent years, the law has developed in favor of the latter.

Book Review: The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era by Schatz, Ronald W

Book Review: <i>The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era</i> by Schatz, Ronald W

Love, laughter and solidarity on the docks in Liverpool, c.1950s–1990s

By focusing on love and humour, this article examines the role of positive emotions in the making and remaking of solidarity on the docks in Liverpool to demonstrate that solidarity was, and still is, embedded within power dynamics that shaped daily life. After outlining the persistent insecurities dock workers and their families faced due to the casual system of employment in place until 1967, the dangerous nature of work and the impact of containerisation, I assess how experiences during this period were remembered. A combination of oral history interviews and archival records of the National Dock Labour Board and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company are used to highlight the significance of family support, the dockers’ bucket and nicknames to understanding the emotional dimensions of class. Ultimately, I outline that solidarity action should not be understood as overt moments of political struggle alone as it was sustained by creating moments of happiness and joy.

Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World by William A. Link

Reviewed by: Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World by William A. Link Tracy Campbell Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World. By William A. Link. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. xii, 343. $35.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6493-4.) North Carolinian Frank Porter Graham occupies a lofty perch in twentieth-century southern history, compared by some of his admirers to Gandhi and Christ. In William A. Link’s well-researched biography, Graham emerges as more complex and human, and his career exposes the limitations of white liberalism in the post–World War II South. After graduating from the University of North Carolina (UNC) in 1909, Graham earned an M.A. in 1916 at Columbia University under William A. Dunning and then attended the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics. Although known affectionately as “Dr. Frank,” Graham never finished his Ph.D., but that did not keep him from returning to UNC to teach history. In 1930, Graham was president of the university, and during the height of the Great Depression, he battled legislative budget cuts and countered attacks on academic freedom. His outspoken support of labor causes made him many powerful enemies throughout the state. In 1938, at the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, Graham proclaimed racial justice was “the primary test of American democracy and Christianity” (p. 106). Throughout his life, Graham sought to bridge divides through education and religion, while avoiding federal directives or legislation. A frustrated John Hope Franklin, like so many others who witnessed Graham’s focus on evolutionary change, was unimpressed. “Graham’s reasonableness, sweet as it was, was on one side. On his side,” Franklin recalled (p. 111). During World War II, Graham served on the National War Labor Board, where, in a crucial 1943 case, he supported equal pay for equal work. He used the occasion to proclaim that the nation should celebrate “‘the vigor and variety of its differences’” and “refuse to become a ‘stronghold of bigots,’” but he retreated when the opportunity arose to further loosen the grip of segregation (p. 147). After the war, President Harry S. Truman appointed Graham to the President’s Commission on Civil Rights. Graham dissented from the committee’s landmark 1947 report, To Secure These Rights, because he opposed federal efforts to ensure voting rights and to pass an antilynching bill. Instead, he encouraged a tepid philosophy of “nondiscrimination, not nonsegregation” (p. 166). In the end, Graham’s attempt to reconcile gradualism and goodwill with the reality of white supremacy satisfied no one. When U.S. senator J. Melville Broughton died in 1949, Governor W. Kerr Scott appointed Graham to fill the seat. Link describes Graham’s 1950 campaign to remain in the Senate as “weak and overconfident” and the candidate himself as “disinterested” (p. 205). Graham relied on his reputation for personal integrity to overcome charges of communist subversion. He won more votes than his opponent, Willis Smith, in the Democratic primary but fell short of the required majority. In the runoff election, Smith’s supporters, in a pattern that became all too common, warned that Graham favored Blacks working and living alongside “your wives and daughters.” They urged white people to “Wake Up!” if they wished to avoid a “mingling of the races” (p. 211). [End Page 182] Graham lost the race by 19,000 votes and never ran for elective office again. Afterward, during his appointment as a United Nations mediator, Graham failed to resolve a dispute in Kashmir between Pakistan and India. When he died in 1972, one friend eulogized that the martyred Graham may have “lived too long” (p. 250). Link’s well-crafted and thoughtful account can be paired with his excellent biography of North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (New York, 2008). The differing tactics and political trajectories of Graham and Helms tell us much about the contours of southern history and American politics since the 1950s and provide a timely context for understanding our current dilemmas. Tracy Campbell University of Kentucky Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association

NLRB Reopens the Door

One of the stronger lightning rod issues for unions and employers alike is property access. For unions, access is highly valuable and sometimes essential so as to reach employees and deliver their message. For some employers, the thought of having to allow their property rights impaired by third‐party union organizers can be chilling. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the law on property rights shifts as frequently as the political winds in Washington, D.C. It was only a matter of time until the current labor board shifted gears on property access, as it did in Bexar County Performing Arts Center Foundation, d/b/a Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 372 NLRB No. 28 (2022).

Book Review: The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era, by Ronald W. Schatz

Book Review: <i>The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era</i>, by Ronald W. Schatz

The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era

The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era

The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker – Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era, by Ronald W.Schatz. University of Illinois Press, 11 Jan 2021, 344 pp., ISBN: 978‐0‐252‐08559‐8, Price, £22.99.

The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker – Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era, by Ronald W.Schatz. University of Illinois Press, 11 Jan 2021, 344 pp., ISBN: 978‐0‐252‐08559‐8, Price, £22.99.

Ronald W. Schatz, The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era

Ronald W. Schatz, The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era

Labor Board changes could lead to more organized labor on campus

President Joe Biden made strong support for organized labor a central part of his 2020 presidential campaign and has made good on that commitment from day one of his presidency. In the hours and days following his inauguration, the President implemented a flurry of personnel and policy changes at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency charged with protecting the rights of private sector employees under the National Labor Relations Act.

The Time Draws Nigh for Employers to be Prepared

For the past several months, Management Report has been alerting readers to a coming change in the ability of unions to organize employees. The prompt removal of the General Counsel at the start of the Biden administration together with the prompt withdrawal of several General Counsel memoranda issued during the Trump administration were warning bells. The bells have further resonated from certain comments and opinions that have been issued by Lauren McFerran, the current NLRB chairman and only current union‐side appointee on the labor board.

Ronald W.Schatz. The War Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker‐Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era. University of Illinois Press, 2021. 344 pages. $29.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978‐0‐252‐08559‐8.

Negotiation JournalVolume 37, Issue 3 p. 393-402 Book Review Schatz, Ronald W.. The War Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era. University of Illinois Press, 2021. 344 pages. $29.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-252-08559-8. Thomas A. Kochan, Search for more papers by this author Thomas A. Kochan, Search for more papers by this author First published: 20 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/nejo.12361Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume37, Issue3Summer 2021Pages 393-402 RelatedInformation

Responding to Requests for Recognition

Under current NLRB rules, a union is required to serve an election petition on the employer prior to its being filed with the labor board. In such instances, there is nothing that an employer need do. As a matter of practice, within the next day or two, an official copy of the filed petition with an assigned case number will be received by the employer directly from the NLRB. The communication from the NLRB starts the legal process leading to an election.

Unions and Inequality over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data

AbstractU.S. income inequality has varied inversely with union density over the past 100 years. But moving beyond this aggregate relationship has proven difficult, in part because of limited microdata on union membership prior to 1973. We develop a new source of microdata on union membership dating back to 1936, survey data primarily from Gallup (N ≈ 980,000), to examine the long-run relationship between unions and inequality. We document dramatic changes in the demographics of union members: when density was at its mid-century peak, union households were much less educated and more nonwhite than other households, whereas pre-World War II and today they are more similar to nonunion households on these dimensions. However, despite large changes in composition and density since 1936, the household union premium holds relatively steady between 10 and 20 log points. We use our data to examine the effect of unions on income inequality. Using distributional decompositions, time series regressions, state-year regressions, as well as a new instrumental-variable strategy based on the 1935 legalization of unions and the World War II–era War Labor Board, we find consistent evidence that unions reduce inequality, explaining a significant share of the dramatic fall in inequality between the mid-1930s and late 1940s.

The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era by Ronald W. Schatz

The Labor Board Crew: Remaking Worker-Employer Relations from Pearl Harbor to the Reagan Era by Ronald W. Schatz

“A Seething Cauldron”

ABSTRACT Are macroeconomic indicators a predictive measure for union organizing? The year 2021 marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1941 Bethlehem Steel strike and its steelworker history suggests that declining unemployment rates and rising stock markets have little correlation to labor organizing. Sixty years of shop floor protests leading up to 1941 demonstrated that local factors, such as unjust dismissals, excessive hours, or the company's defiance of labor board rulings, drove union campaigns at the South Bethlehem plant. Finally, the success of the campaigns grew in proportion to government support for labor. Steelworker history of one of the twentieth century's most powerful corporations sheds light on organized labor's prospects heading into the mid-twenty-first century.

The ESG–financial performance relationship: Does the type of employee board representation matter?

AbstractResearch Question/IssueWe examine the impact of two differing types of employee board representation (i.e., labor board representation and employee shareholder board representations) on environmental, social, and corporate governance components of ESG performance and the moderating role of each type of employee board representation on the relationship between ESG performance and the firm's market value.Research Findings/InsightsUsing a propensity score matching approach on a sample of French firms listed in the SBF 120 index from 2007 to 2017, our findings reveal that labor board representatives act in the opposite direction to employee shareholder board representatives by focusing exclusively on improving social performance and reducing environmental and corporate governance performance. The way employees are represented on the board of directors also moderates the corporate ESG–financial performance relationship differently.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsEmployee directors are not a homogenous group. The differentiation between the two types of employee directors (i.e., labor board representatives and employee shareholder board representatives) brings a deeper understanding of the effect of stakeholders' representation on the board.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsOur results are of interest to governance policymakers because they provide them with a fresh understanding of the key role of employee board representation. A meaningful inference to be drawn from our findings is that employee ownership and the representation of employees on the board as employee shareholders may bring about fundamental changes in employees' attitudes and behavior on the board and may, in this regard, be considered as a credible way of generating social harmony and constructive relationships between employees and shareholders.Video Abstracthttps://youtu.be/GqB_6GxtH2A

Intra-union conflict and the 1970 dock strike in Britain

ABSTRACT The docks are one of the most academically scrutinised sectors of the British economy and, due to the industry’s historical reputation for strike-proneness, episodes of workplace conflict are generally popular sources for research. Nevertheless, one dispute remains curiously under-examined – the 1970 national dock strike. This is particularly remarkable since it constituted the first national strike in the industry for nearly half a century, lasted almost three weeks, led to the declaration of a State of Emergency and required a government-sponsored inquiry to reach a resolution. On the surface, it was provoked by disagreement between the national employers’ association and the union over basic weekly wage bargaining. Behind the scenes, however, the course, nature and outcome of the dispute is best understood in the context of the relationship between the membership and officialdom of the union, which was rooted in a history of antagonism, and the revolutionary technological changes taking place in cargo handling at this time. What follows is a detailed account of the 1970 national dock strike and the events surrounding it, considered in the context of the literature relating to hierarchical divisions in trade union organisations. Abbreviations LMC: Local Modernisation Committee NAPE: National Association of Port Employers NASDU: National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers Union NDLB: National Dock Labour Board NDLS: National Dock Labour Scheme NJC: National Joint Council for the Port Transport Industry NPSSC: National Ports Shop Steward Committee TGWU: Transport and General Workers’ Union TUC: Trades Union Congress TUR: Temporary Unattached Register