AFSCME Information Highway

Source: Amy Dean and David B. Reynolds, New Labor Forum, Vol. 17 no. 1, Spring 2008

The 2005 AFL-CIO/Change to Win debate was notable not simply for what was discussed, but also what was not. It focused on how to build one crucial element of worker power: workplace organizing and the collective bargaining strength that comes with it. Absent, however, was discussion of a second necessary dimention: regional power built in the community. Yet, historically in the United States, and around the world, geographic power has been necessary to increase workplace power.

Posted by Info Center at 12:38 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Richard W. Hurd, New Labor Forum, Vol. 17 no. 1, Spring 2008

Over the past ten years there has been a notable shift in union organizing strategies. Once the exception, organizing conducted under the umbrella of negotiated neutrality agreements has become the preferred method in the drive to reverse decline and build union density.

Posted by Info Center at 12:36 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Organizing | Permalink

Source: Henry H. Drummonds, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 4, Winter, 2007

This article sketches developments in the card majority debate and several related issues reflected in developing case law concerning the use of "salts," "neutrality" agreements, and accretion clauses in union attempts to expand representation rights. It also briefly mentions other significant recent decisions that make it more difficult for unions to win, and keep, representation rights. ... A major public policy issue faces the Congress, state legislatures, and federal and state labor boards. How is the ideal of employee free choice best actualized? The law is changing. From the union side one sees legislative attempts to win card majority recognition/certification rights and to avoid elections in which employers are free to campaign against unionization at all costs. And from the perspective of the NLRB's General Counsel and the NLRB's current majority, concerns for employee free choice create persistent questioning of long-assumed principles of card check recognition. For the private sector unions, especially, this issue may decide their ultimate fate as the percentage of represented employees shrinks toward the vanishing point.

Posted by Info Center at 2:15 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Jeremy Smerd, Workforce Management, February 7, 2008

The proportion of union workers is up for the first time in decades, but jobs are more likely to be low-wage.

Union membership as a part of the overall workforce in the United States grew last year for the first time in a quarter-century, according to analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The news, published January 25, came a day after the Ford Motor Co. announced it would further reduce the number of hourly workers by 11,000 on top of the 44,000 jobs the auto-maker has shed since 2006.

It represents part of the seismic shift in the makeup of America's unionized workforce. Today, a union worker is more likely to be a low-skilled, low-paid service worker than a skilled, well-paid manufacturing employee.

"The future of the unions is the $8-an-hour home health care worker," says David Gregory, professor of law at St. John's University. The unions may have regained membership with lower-wage service workers, but they cannot regain the dues lost along with higher-paid jobs, Gregory says.

Posted by Info Center at 4:56 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Mark Milner, The Guardian, February 11 2008

· Super-union will square up to multinational firms
· Unite and USW merger will cover 3m members

Two of the largest British and American unions are hoping to announce an agreement this summer to create a transatlantic super-union capable of defending workers' rights in the globalised marketplace.

Unite, which has about two million members, and the United Steelworkers union (USW), which represents about a million members in the US, Canada and the Caribbean, see the creation of an international union presence as the key to meeting the challenges posed by the onward march of globalisation.

Posted by Info Center at 4:53 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Raymond Hogler Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 3, Fall 2007

Conditions for collective bargaining in the United States are poor and deteriorating. A large body of labor law scholarship documents the weakness of legal protections and processes designed to promote unionism in this country. Professor Morris's theory about minority union bargaining is offered as a means of strengthening unions in a hostile environment. This article argues that the strategy is a risky one because it invites a resurgence of company unions, which threatened to overwhelm the modern American labor movement at its inception in the 1930s. A better option would be for labor to attack the root source of its contemporary decline. The three pillars of collective bargaining as envisioned by Wagner are independent unions, exclusive representation, and organizational security. The malignancy of right to work laws has destroyed one of those pillars. Morris's vision of going back to the future would eliminate the other two.

Posted by Info Center at 5:19 PM in Collective Bargaining | Future of Unions | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Art Levine, In These Times, Vol. 31 no. 10, October 2007

"If you thought the union movement was in decline--Think Again!" So read an online ad for a recent seminar in Las Vegas that promised to help me remain union-free. Actually, I had thought the union movement was in decline, but I'm an open-minded sort, so I was willing to be persuaded otherwise. I paid my $1,595 and signed up. Organized by seminar-specialty firm Executive Enterprises, it would be led by attorneys from Jackson Lewis, one of the leading law firms in the field of union-busting, which has become a multibillion-dollar industry encompassing more than 2,500 lawyers and consultants offering their services. The classes would take place in the Las Vegas Westin Casuarina, which promises its guests "a sanctuary in the midst of bustling excitement" as well as craps, blackjack and three-card poker. I booked a room.

Posted by Info Center at 5:08 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Organizing | Permalink

Source: Tiffany Ten Eyck, Labor Notes, no. 340, July 2007

Young people aren’t entering the labor movement in large numbers these days. In 2005, less than five percent of workers aged 16-24 were in unions, while workers 65 and older enjoyed the highest increase in unionization. At Labor Notes’ recent San Jose Troublemakers School, young workers and longtime union members got together to talk about how to overcome the obstacles preventing the labor movement from reaching young workers.

Posted by Info Center at 5:59 PM in Future of Unions | Organizing | Permalink

Source: Renuka Rayasam, U.S. World and News Report, Vol. 143 no. 2, July 16, 2007

Will workers of the world (finally) unite? Leaders say yes, but barriers loom.

Posted by Info Center at 2:11 PM in Future of Unions | Globalization | Permalink

Source: Janice Fine, New Labor Forum, Vol. 16 no. 2, Spring 2007

Plan B is not a “get members quick scheme.” The plan is not to reify benefits provision from movement building—both are necessary. Plan B is part “benefits unionism,” part “community unionism,” and part “occupational unionism.”

Posted by Info Center at 10:10 AM in Future of Unions | Permalink

Source: Jim McNeill, Dissent, Spring 2007

So how should we gauge the performance of the two federations since the split? Mere survival has to be seen as an achievement for the AFL-CIO, which had to cut a quarter of its 420-person staff in 2005. And the old federation has done more than survive. It’s made important progress in the fight to improve the country’s terrible labor laws, and several AFL-CIO unions are doing some solid organizing. It shows signs of life that are worth exploring. The real pressure is on CTW to justify the breakup. The upstart federation made some bold promises when it bolted the AFL-CIO. As its two-year anniversary approaches, it’s not unreasonable to ask whether progress is being made. Has CTW got a realistic plan to revive America’s unions or is it squandering precious resources on a miracle cure?

Posted by Info Center at 10:04 AM in Future of Unions | Permalink

Source: Nelson Lichtenstein, Dissent, Spring 2007

A labor victory in the new Congress depends on the definition of what it means to win. Labor’s broad agenda is passable in almost inverse relationship to that agenda’s capacity to strengthen the institutional and political power of trade unionism itself. This has been true for more than forty years, ever since the mid-1960s, when, during the second of the two great surges of liberal legislation in the last century (the mid-1930s is the other one) civil rights, Medicare, immigration reform, and aid to education passed with relative ease, while the repeal of 14b, which allowed Southern and Western states to pass and maintain right-to-work laws had no chance in a Congress dominated by ostensible liberals.

Today’s Congress is far less liberal than that of forty-two years ago, and of course there is a right-wing Republican in the White House, but the dynamic is much the same. Those elements of labor’s agenda that are the least attached to the institutional needs of trade unionism per se have the best chance of passage. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and it provides some guidance for labor strategists.

Posted by Info Center at 10:03 AM in Future of Unions | Politics | Permalink

Source: Richard W. Hurd, Journal of Labor Research, Volume 28, Number 2, Spring 2007

The AFL-CIO and Change to Win have learned to co-exist without debilitating acrimony. The AFL-CIO has established Industry Coordinating Committees to facilitate cooperative bargaining and organizing ventures. On the political front, the AFL-CIO took the lead in labor's 2006 electoral operations and conducted an extensive, efficient, and unified campaign. Change to Win unions worked together to build strategies for a growth agenda. The success of UNITE-HERE's Hotel Workers Rising Campaign indicates the potential of this approach. Difficult challenges remain, but the strategic developments show signs of life and offer hope that labor may find a path to the future.

Posted by Info Center at 5:57 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Gary Chaison, Journal of Labor Research, Volume 28, Number 2, Spring 2007

In 2005, the AFL-CIO split and the Change to Win Coalition (CtW) was founded because of the personal ambition of dissident union leaders and their frustration with the severe and continuing decline in union membership. The CtW was build on a shared faith that only a fresh start could lead the unions out of their crisis. But a convincing case has not been made that the seceding unions would be more successful outside of AFL-CIO. When it is seen against the backdrop of the crisis in the labor movement and the enormity of the task of union organizing and revival, the AFL-CIO split does not really matter.

Posted by Info Center at 5:56 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Monica Bieski Boris and Randall G. Wright, WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 10 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

It would not be surprising if in a state like North Carolina, whose union density is less than 3 percent and whose labor budgets are small and tight, the state federation concentrated on a traditional labor agenda of only servicing the remaining union members in an effort to merely survive. All of the main ingredients of building effective labor power—deepening relationships with community partners, developing a progressive agenda, electing and holding accountable political champions, leadership development, and support for organizing—require significant resources. Yet, because the resource base is small, the state federation has become the natural base from which to grow such strategies. By pooling resources to hire talented staff and by fostering deep relationships among community players with key resources, the North Carolina AFL–CIO is able to have an impact far greater than its paper strength. Although there is a paucity of literature on central labor councils, recent research points to the model as an important element of building a strong labor movement (Ness and Elmer 2001; Ruffini 2002; Richter 2003; Rogers and Streeck 1995).

Posted by Info Center at 10:31 AM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Tom Karson, WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 10 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

For over a decade the Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council has had a reputation as an activist council engaged in innovative coalition building. Looking to build on this work and learning from the power-building experiences in California and elsewhere, the Council founded the nonprofit Georgia Stand-Up in 2005. The new organization immediately leaped into coalition work around Atlanta's massive new economic development initiative—the BeltLine Project. This article looks at how local leadership was able to combine seeds laid by prior work with national support to produce a dynamic example of the new second generation of regional power building.

Posted by Info Center at 10:30 AM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Bruce Colburn, Scott Reynolds, David Reynolds, WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 10 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

New York was the first state to embark on the New Alliance process, originally approved by the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) Convention in 1999 and reaffirmed in 2005. Since New York acted, New Alliance processes have been initiated in nine other states—Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Ohio was the most recent state to act. In April 2006, some 600 delegates approved a reorganization plan that consolidated the state's thirty-six central labor councils into twenty-two councils working under five area labor federations, each with full-time staff….

…New Alliance seeks to take state and regional labor structures built for a prior era and reorganize them to stimulate growth in the labor movement. It essentially asks labor leaders to consider what their state and local labor movements would look like ideally if they had the luxury of starting from scratch today. By struggling over this question and connecting the answers to where the labor movement now is, New Alliance hoped to produce a vision for state and local labor movements and a concrete program to build toward this direction.

Posted by Info Center at 10:28 AM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Jeff Grabelsky, WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Vol. 10 no. 1, March 2007

(subscription required)

The labor movement in New York State (NYS) has undergone a dramatic restructuring that is part of a national American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations program called the New Alliance. The purpose of the New Alliance is to build the capacity of local labor movements and to empower unions to help shape a region's political and economic agenda. The restructuring in NYS led to the consolidation of twenty-five central labor councils into five area labor federations, each of which is developing the resources, staff, and leadership to help grow labor's regional power across the state. This article describes the origins of the New Alliance, the nature of the restructuring process, the ways in which the capacity of local labor movements are expanding, the programmatic work the restructured central bodies have undertaken in the last five years, and the impact of the national split on local and regional central bodies across NYS.

Posted by Info Center at 10:27 AM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Robert Nathan and Jo-Ann Mort, The Nation, Vol. 284 no. 10, March 12, 2007
(subscription required)

"Unionized" isn't a word you hear in many American movies. "A decent wage," now there's a phrase that doesn't crop up too often. As for the evocative "your lives and your substance," poetic descriptions of the human condition aren't generally found in contemporary entertainment.

Posted by Info Center at 1:05 PM in Future of Unions | Permalink

Source: Matthew J. Slaughter, Industrial Relations, Vol. 46 no. 2, April 2007
(subscription required)

For decades, the private-sector unionization rate in the United States has been falling. At the same time, the integration of the United States into the world economy has been rising. Many anecdotes suggest the latter has played a role in that decline, with unions feeling pressured to reduce employment and/or compensation demands in the face of rising cross-border activity of employers. To investigate this possibility econometrically, in this paper I assembled a panel of U.S. manufacturing industries that matches union-coverage rates with measures of global engagement such as exports, imports, tariffs, transportation costs, and foreign direct investment. The main finding is a statistically and economically significant correlation between falling union coverage and greater numbers of inward FDI transactions. Possible interpretations of this finding are then discussed. Because U.S. affiliates of foreign multinationals have higher unionization rates than U.S.-based firms do, this correlation does not reflect just a compositional shift toward these affiliates. Instead, it may reflect pressure of international capital mobility on U.S.-based companies, consistent with research on how rising capital mobility raises labor-demand elasticities and alters bargaining power.

Posted by Info Center at 5:51 PM in Future of Unions | Globalization | Permalink

Source: Ruth Milkman, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 32 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

This article surveys unionization patterns and other workplace-oriented organizing among Mexican-born workers since the mid-1990s. Although the number of Mexican-born union members grew during that decade, the unionized proportion declined, especially among noncitizens. The decline reflects the large proportion of new immigrants in the Mexican-born population and the increased geographic dispersion of immigration in recent years away from highly unionized states such as Illinois and California. Another factor is that recent Mexican immigrants are underrepresented in the most unionized sectors (such as government employment). However, unions, especially in California, have effectively mobilized Mexican immigrants into electoral politics in the 1990s, and new community-based organizations with a focus on economic justice have also recruited low-wage Mexican immigrant workers in occupations such as day labor and domestic service, in which conventional unionism is rare.

Posted by Info Center at 4:54 PM in Future of Unions | Immigration | Permalink

Source: David Foster, New Labor Forum, Vol. 16 no. 1, Winter 2007

The Donora disaster was the root cause of the USW’s subsequent embrace of environmental issues that led eventually to the founding on June 7, 2006 of a new Strategic Alliance between North America’s largest private sector manufacturing union, and the Sierra Club, the country’s oldest and largest grass-roots environmental organization. While the decision to align the USW and the Sierra Club originated in their shared history of supporting environmental protections like the Clean Air Act, the new Alliance was sparked by the accelerating pace of globalization and the seismic social shifts accompanying it. Both organizations realized that for the first time in human history any meaningful improvement in the economic well-being of the world’s population was dependent on the sustainable management of our planted and its resources.

Posted by Info Center at 11:24 AM in Environment | Future of Unions | Globalization | Health & Safety | Permalink

Source: Victor Narro, Kent Wong, and Janna Shadduck-Hernández, New Labor Forum, Vol. 16 no. 1, Winter 2007

For three months between March 10 and May 1, 2006, five million mostly Latino Immigrants and their supporters demonstrated in over one hundred cities throughout the United States. The marches and rallies demanded full rights for immigrants, and opposed the anti-immigrant legislation pending in Congress. Immigrant families – women and men, grandparents and grandchildren – came out of the shadows of society to demand justice and equality.

Posted by Info Center at 11:22 AM in Discrimination | Future of Unions | Permalink

Source: Stephen Lerner, New Labor Forum, Vol. 16 no. 1, Winter 2007

At no time in history has there been a greater urgency or opportunity to form real global unions whose goal is to organize tens of millions of workers to win economic and social justice by counterbalancing global corporations on the world stage even as the power of the state declines.

Posted by Info Center at 11:18 AM in Future of Unions | Globalization | Permalink

Source: Norma M. Riccucci, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 27 no. 1, March 2007
(subscription required)

This article provides a brief picture of the various unions that currently represent state and local government employees in the United States, including teachers and professors. It reviews the factors that have contributed to union decline in the private sector, and those factors explaining union growth in the public sector. Its purpose is purely descriptive, seeking to illustrate the ability of unions to seize opportunities to organize public employees, thereby increasing their "strength in numbers."

Posted by Info Center at 11:15 AM in Future of Unions | Permalink

Source: Mitra Toossi, Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 129 no. 11, November 2006

Among the factors affecting the size, composition, and growth of the labor force over the next 50 years are the aging of the baby-boom generation, the stabilization of women’s labor force participation rates, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the workforce. The 2005-50 period is projected to witness the massive exit of the baby-boom generation out of the labor force, bringing to an end one of the major drivers of labor force growth over the post-World War II period.

Posted by Info Center at 5:33 PM in Future of Unions | Permalink

Source: Jack Fiorito, Journal of Labor Studies, Vol. 28 no. 1, Winter 2007

Increased global competition and domestic deregulation, among other economic factors, combined to provide important external forces for change in bargaining and unions. The year 1980 also marked the beginning of a conservative turn in attitudes and national government starting with Regan’s election and followed by two Bush regimes sandwiching the Clinton administration. With the exception of the Clinton era, unions faced a more hostile central government than at any time since the nineteenth century.

Posted by Info Center at 5:21 PM in Future of Unions | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Joseph Adler, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

Of the approximately 20 million public employees in the United States, more than eight million are either members of or represented by labor unions—a penetration rate of just over 40 percent. What is remarkable about this phenomenal growth is that most of the expansion of union activity in government has occurred within the last 40 years, and almost mirrors the decline of union strength in the private sector.

The rise and fall of labor in the private sector is a backdrop to the growth of public sector collective bargaining. Explanations for the dramatic increase in government union activity can be explored from a number of different perspectives. Current public policy efforts to reform civil service and allow managers greater flexibility are seen by some researchers as having the potential to impact the ability of public sector unions to represent their members effectively.

Posted by Info Center at 10:37 AM in Future of Unions | Labor History | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Peter Fairbrother, Glynne Williams, Ruth Barton, Enrico Gibellieri, and Andrea Tropeoli, Labor Studies Journal, Winter 2007, Volume 31, no. 4

The current circumstances of trade unions are subject to extensive debate. As a contribution to these debates, three sets of issues are addressed: how unions organize and operate in relation to members, how unions reposition and rebuild themselves against changing forms of ownership and different managerial practices, and how unions attempt to face the challenges of multinational capital. Unions have sought to renew and revitalize themselves by changing organizational practices or changing aims and ambitions, as well as by recomposing past relationships, especially between unions and state bodies. These themes are addressed via three case studies chosen to exemplify particular aspects of union organization and activity. The study concludes with a comparative evaluation of the three cases in terms of the principles of union renewal.

Posted by Info Center at 5:01 PM in Future of Unions | Permalink