Recently in Future of Unions Category

Source: Berger-Marks Foundation, 2010

In March 2010, the Berger-Marks Foundation invited 30 women activists to New Orleans for a candid conversation across generations about how unions can attract young workers, especially women, and support them in key leadership roles.

Out of frank discussions over two days comes this report, "Stepping Up, Stepping Back: Women Activists 'Talk Union' Across Generations" by Linda Foley, Foundation president. In it, problems are faced openly and solutions are suggested. Its content comes from work done in small groups, which separated into three age clusters, and plenary sessions. As Foundation trustees, we took notes as silent observers. We hope that unions will find this report useful and that it will contribute to academic research on intergenerational activism
See also:
- Summary
- Bibliography

Source: Victor G. Devinatz, WorkingUSA, Vol. 13 no. 2, June 2010
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From the abstract:
Assuming the federation presidency in the first contested election in AFL-CIO history, John Sweeney, elected as a reform candidate in 1995, vowed to halt U.S. labor's downward trajectory through the launching of massive union organizing drives and implementing an array of innovative programs. Although he initially inspired tremendous confidence in various sectors of the U.S. trade union movement, by 2003, an incipient opposition movement to Sweeney had emerged within the AFL-CIO which culminated in a number of unions leaving the federation and forming the Change to Win Federation in 2005. This article critically analyzes the fourteen-year administration of John Sweeney as president of the AFL-CIO (1995-2009). I argue that although the Sweeney administration made a number of important advances when compared with the previous two administrations of George Meany and Lane Kirkland, Sweeney's approach was fundamentally flawed because he implemented a type of social movement unionism from above. This article concludes that for a revival of the U.S. trade union movement to take place, a social movement unionism from below must be developed by the rank-and-file workers themselves.

Source: John Schmitt, Kris Warner, WorkingUSA, Vol. 13 no. 2, June 2010
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
We review annual, nationally representative data from the Current Population Survey for the years 1983 (the earliest year for which comparable data are available) to 2008 on union members and workers covered by union contracts. Over the period, the composition of the unionized workforce changed dramatically. In 1983, more than half of all union workers were white men, few union workers had a college degree, and almost one-third were in manufacturing. By 2008, over 45 percent of unionized workers were women and, if at current growth rates, women will be a majority of union workers before 2020. Over one-third of union workers in 2008 had a four-year college degree or more--a higher percentage than for the workforce as a whole. And, in 2008, only about one-in-ten union workers was in manufacturing, with almost half in the public sector. Latinos and Asia-Pacific Americans, two groups that include substantial numbers of immigrants, are the fastest growing ethnic groups in the labor movement, though both are less represented in organized labor than they are in the overall workforce.

Source: Marick F. Masters, Robert R. Albright, Ray Gibney, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, published online May 29, 2010
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
The face of unionism in the United States is becoming increasingly public sector. On the surface, public sector unionism appears as a bright spot for labor. A more careful examination of the data, however, reveals that such unionism is at a standstill. Absolute growth has been insufficient to offset losses in private industry, and it is largely tied to increases in public employment. Public employee unions face numerous serious challenges, and questions have been raised in the federal service about the very legitimacy of union representation. Future scenarios suggest that public sector unionism as a whole will likely remain in a more or less stagnant position.

Source: Alex Bryson, Rafael Gomez, Paul Willman, Labor History, Vol. 51 no. 1, February 2010
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From the abstract:
Union membership has declined precipitously in a number of countries, including in the United States, over the past fifty years. Can anything be done to stem this decline? This article argues that union voice is a positive attribute (among others) of union membership that is experiential in nature and that, unlike the costs of unionization, can be discerned only after exposure to a union. This makes the act of 'selling' unionism to workers (and to some extent firms as well) difficult. Supportive social trends and social customs are required in order to make unionization's hard-to-observe benefits easier to discern. Most membership-based institutions face the same dilemma. However, recent social networking organizations such as Facebook have been rather successful in attracting millions of active members in a relatively short period of time. The question of whether the union movement can appropriate some of these lessons is discussed with reference to historical and contemporary examples.

Source: Economist, Vol. 395 no. 8679, April 22, 2010
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Despite the headlines, there is no epidemic of strikes--but worse unrest may be looming in bloated public sectors once spending cuts begin

Source: Georgetown University, April 6, 2010

Georgetown's Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, in association with Dissent, The Nation, and The American Prospect, hosted a forum about national politics, progressives and the labor movement. Panelists talked about how the labor movement can grow and engage with a progressive movement and building of a broader progressive movement. This program contains strong language that may not be appropriate for all viewers.
Watch the video.

Source: Michael Merrill, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Vol. 7 no. 1, Spring 2010
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
The objective conditions requisite for a labor movement revival are palpable: more poverty, more income inequality, more families without health insurance, more retirees without adequate pensions, not to mention the recent near-collapse of global finance. Despite conditions so ripe for unionism, the labor movement barely holds its own. Why? And what can be done about it? Does the future lie in a "transformative" (i.e., revolutionary) anticapitalist class struggle? Or does it lie closer to the roots of the current social democratic contractualism of the mainstream labor movement? Two recent books provide an opportunity for Michael Merrill to explore these questions.

Source: John Buntin, Governing, March 2010

Critics say it's time for cities and states to get tough with public-sector unions. They may be right -- for all the wrong reasons.

Source: Roger Bybee, In These Times, January 26, 2010

The anti-union carpet-bombing is incessant, almost universal in the private sector with management fully exploiting its unilateral access to workers on the job. Further, the anti-union war is now accelerating against public-sector as well, observed sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, former union organizer who has written extensively on labor.

Corporations have been actively trying to influence not just their workers, but their investors and the general public as well, against unions. Michaels Stores, the arts and crafts supply chain, is trying to mobilize its stockholders, portraying worker's right to organize as a threat to the company.