AFSCME Information Highway

Source: John Schmitt, Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2008

From the summary:
A new report from CEPR shows that union membership increases the wages of all workers, with low-wage workers seeing the largest gains.

This report uses national data from 2003 to 2007 to show that unionization raises the wages of the typical low-wage worker (one in the 10th percentile) by 20.6 percent compared to 13.7 percent for the typical medium wage worker (one in the 50th percentile), 6.1 percent for the typical high-wage worker (one in the 90th percentile). The paper also produces results for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Throughout the states, a similar pattern holds, with unionization raising the wages of the lowest-wage workers the most.

See also:
Press release

Posted by Info Center at 5:38 PM in Compensation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Herman Benson, Benson's Union Democracy Blog, January 18, 2008

The following piece first appeared in the current issue of New Politics.

Cheerleading is not enough. It's time for those scholars, artists, and writers to take another look at what's happening in our labor movement.

When John Sweeney defeated Lane Kirkland and Tom Donahue to take over as president of the AFL-CIO in 1995, he proposed to lead the federation out of its doldrums. What resounded with promise was his call for "a reborn movement of American workers, ready to fight for social and economic justice ... a new progressive voice in American life ...changing the direction of American politics ...a vibrant social movement, a democratic movement that speaks for all American workers."

Posted by Info Center at 9:54 AM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Working USA, March 2008

The essays and commentary in this issue mark six decades since an overwhelming majority of Congressional Republicans and Democrats joined forces to vilify and castigate the specter of "big labor" haunting the postwar economy. In June of 1947, the U.S. had a new labor policy when both houses of Congress handily overrode Harry Truman's presidential veto to pass the Taft-Hartley Act amending the national Labor Relations Act of 1935. Future amendments to federal labor law have not mitigated the fundamental antilabor impact of Taft-Hartley. Despite tumultuous shifts in the U.S. and world economy and the precipitous decline in private-sector union membership, Taft-Hartley's amendments to the NLRA remain integral to the legal framework for twenty-first-century labor relations. This regime of antilabor law provides the thematic backdrop for the essays and commentary in this special issue of Working USA.

Articles include:
Labor Law Inside Out by Wilma Liebman
Preemption and Civic Democracy in the Battle Over Wal-Mart by Catherine Fisk and Michael Oswalt
More Democratic Than a Secret Ballot? The Case for Majority Sing-Up by Gordon Lafer
Labor's New Opening to International Human Rights Standards by Lance Compa
The Employee Free Choice Act and a long-Term Strategy for Winning Workers' Rights by James Pope, Peter Kellman and Ed Bruno

Posted by William at 9:51 AM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research

Press release:
This paper examines the impact of unionization on the pay and benefits of African-American workers. The most recent data suggest that even after controlling for differences between union and non-union workers --including such factors as age and education level-- unionization substantially improves the pay and benefits received by black workers.

On average, unionization raised black workers' wages 12 percent -about $2.00 per hour- relative to black workers with similar characteristics who were not in unions.

The union impact on health-insurance and pension coverage was even larger. African-American workers who were in unions were 16 percentage points more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and 19 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan than similar non-union workers.

These union effects are large by any measure. To put these findings into perspective, between 1996 and 2000, a period of sustained, low unemployment that helped to produce the best wage growth for low-wage workers in the last three decades, the real wage of 10th percentile workers (who make more than 10 percent of workers, but less than 90 percent of workers), rose, in total, about 12 percent. The 12-percent union wage boost for black workers, therefore, was equal in magnitude to four years of historically rapid real wage growth.

Over the same boom period in the 1990s, employer-provided health and pension coverage among the bottom fifth of workers rose only about three percentage points for health insurance (up 3.2 percentage points) and pensions (up 2.7 percent) - only about one-fifth of the impact of unionization on health-insurance coverage and about one-sixth of the impact on pension coverage for African Americans.

The benefits of unionization were even higher for black workers in typically low-wage occupations. Black workers in unions in otherwise low-wage occupations earned, on average, 14 percent more than their non-union counterparts. Unionized black workers in low-wage occupations were also 20 percentage points more likely than comparable non-union workers to have employer-provided health insurance, and 28 percentage points more likely to have a pension plan.

Full report (PDF; 174 KB)

Posted by William at 10:47 AM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Food & Water Watch

A new report by consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch arms consumers with the facts about a major player in the meat business, Smithfield Foods. The group's new report, The Trouble With Smithfield: A Corporate Profile, details the damage the world's largest pork producer has caused to the environment, animal welfare, public health, family farmers, and workers around the world.

The company's opportunistic acquisitions and the failure of the federal government to enforce anti-trust laws have allowed Smithfield to dominate almost all aspects of pork production and processing.

The factory farms that the company owns or controls cram hundreds or thousands of pigs into long, warehouse-like barns. And all those hogs generate lots of waste. In 1997, the company received one of the largest Clean Water Act fines in history for failing to install adequate pollution control equipment.

In addition to environmental damage, Smithfield operations threaten the health of people living nearby who suffer from a wide range of ailments, including asthma, allergies, eye irritation, compromised immune function, depression and other disorders.

The Trouble With Smithfield: A Corporate Profile

Full Report (PDF; 1.2 MB)

Posted by Info Center at 8:04 AM in Labor Unions | Organizing | Permalink

Source: Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash, WBAI's Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report, March 7, 2008
(audio)

From the summary:
Domestic workers to tell their stories - of their pains, their pride and their efforts to organize. Women of color, from around the world work as domestic workers. Most are employed without a living wage, health care, and basic labor protections.

Posted by Info Center at 12:22 PM in Child Care Workers | Home Health Workers | Labor Unions | Permalink

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: Melinda Tuhus, In These Times, February 5, 2008

Foxwoods Resort Casino rises from the hills of rural southeastern Connecticut like a gambler's Oz.

It is one of the country's biggest Indian casinos and it is the largest employer in the state, with 10,000 workers. Of those employees, about 2,600 are dealers of games such as poker and blackjack. And on Nov. 24, 2007, many of these dealers placed a bet on a better life with the United Auto Workers (UAW). ....

It's the first election at an Indian casino to be overseen by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which made a groundbreaking ruling last year that allowed Indian casinos to be unionized. But casino management has appealed the vote, claiming it violates tribal sovereignty.

Posted by Info Center at 10:58 AM in Gambling | Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, USDL 08-0092, January 25, 2008

• Workers in the public sector had a union membership rate nearly five times that of private sector employees.
• Education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate among all occupations, at 37.2 percent, followed closely by protective service occupations at 35.2 percent.
• Among demographic groups, the union membership rate was highest for black men and lowest for Hispanic women.
• Wage and salary workers ages 45 to 54 (15.7 percent) and ages 55 to 64 (16.1 percent) were more likely to be union members than were workers ages 16 to 24 (4.8 percent).

Posted by Info Center at 5:31 PM in Labor Unions | Statistics | Permalink

Source: James B. Jacobs and Dimitri D. Portnoi, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Volume 28, no. 2, 2007

This article is a comprehensive case study of the most important civil RICO labor racketeering case in American history, U.S. v. IBT. It provides the first empirical study of the effort by DOJ and the federal courts to purge organized crime from the IBT and to reform the union so that it will be resistant to future corruption and racketeering. Drawing on 18 years of litigation generated by the effort of court-supervised monitors to enforce the 1988 settlement, it utilizes a database of all disciplinary charges brought by and the sanctions imposed by the court-supervised monitors. This article traces the remedial phase which has generated an immense amount of litigation right up to the present and focuses on the disciplinary (as opposed to the election) part of the remedial effort. The magnitude of this effort can hardly be exaggerated. The two remedial entities that the settlement established to enforce the consent order have expelled more than 600 officers and members from the IBT and placed some 40 IBT locals and joint councils under the international union's trusteeship. This work has been accomplished via the creation of an IBT-specific criminal justice system that has evolved into an elaborate system of procedural and substantive disciplinary law. U.S. v. IBT is an experiment in institution building. It may allow us to determine, or at least to knowledgeably assess, the potential and limits of civil RICO as a methodology for attacking deeply entrenched systemic criminality in powerful formal organizations.

Posted by Info Center at 1:51 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: New Labor Forum, Fall 2007
By Jake Metzger

Not a whole lot has changed since seven unions established the Change to Win (CtW) labor federation in the summer of 2005 to rival the AFL-CIO. As one who had more fears than hopes for the split, I take some comfort in that. I expected much worse... That the worst hasn't happened is a testament, I think, to the good sense and commitment of local leaders and staff who seem to have successfully ignored the rivalries of top leaders and gone about their business, for good or for ill, as if "all that" didn't matter. ... Could child care workers be the equivalent in our time of the 1930s auto workers (or rubber workers)? I haven't heard anybody m ake that claim, probably because it isn't clear how much of a difference unions can actually make in these workers' wages and conditions or in their form of organization. But they're off to a good start in making a real difference, according to a 2007 study by the National Women's law Center. And if there is to be one spark that sets off a fire of organizing, ti could be this low-wage, overwhelmingly female, multicolored workforce that requires a combination fo political, community, and labor organizing of a thoroughly nontraditional kind.

Posted by Info Center at 2:08 PM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper

Globalization generates increased competition between firms in the product market, which induces firms to seek flexibility in their labor relations - flexibility to hire and fire on short notice, to increase or shrink the overall size of their workforce, to adjust pay to short-term performance results, to redeploy workers within the firm and to outside production partners, and to retain workers with particular skills on an as-needed basis. These practices are in tension with the labor law regimes throughout the Western world. In the United States, employers' drive for flexibility has fueled aggressive de-unionization efforts, and has induced employers to increase their use of temporary workers and independent contractors and to restructure pension and benefit plans. A crucial question for employment regulation thus becomes how to protect workers - how to mitigate their vulnerabilities and ameliorate the shifting risks that today's workplace practices impose. The author argues that other countries are experiencing the same tension between flexibility and worker protection, and suggests that we learn from other countries' efforts to devise mechanisms to preserve worker security at the same time relaxing traditional labor protective regimes.

Full text (PDF; 184 KB).

Posted by Info Center at 10:23 AM in Globalization | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Alan Howard
Dissent
Fall 2007

Last November in Vienna, fifteen years after the demise of the Soviet Union and well into the third decade of corporate-driven globalization, the international trade union movement was reorganized to eliminate its debilitating cold war political divisions and to enhance coordination across industrial lines made obsolete by globalization. The founding of this new organization, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 168 million workers in 153 countries, was hailed as historic by the few dozen people who follow these things, which it may well be, though you probably missed the coverage in your local newspaper.

Earlier this year AFL-CIO president John Sweeney met with Iraqi trade unionists in Jordan (there being no place secure enough in Iraq to hold such a meeting) to support Iraqi union resistance to an array of Bush administration policies, particularly on the privatization and denationalization of the oil industry; Teamster president James Hoffa and Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern were in China with a delegation of Change to Win (CTW) unions, the group that split from the AFL-CIO, meeting with communists and capitalists to exchange views on worker rights in the global economy. In Ottawa, Steelworker president Leo Gerard announced a merger that would bring together nearly three million American, Canadian, British and Irish workers in one union, and Communication Workers president Larry Cohen was in Athens to raise the visibility of an organizing campaign aimed at the world's largest cell phone service company, which operates in twenty-five countries on four continents.

These events reflect the realization at the highest levels of organized labor that unions have no future if they do not become truly global institutions. What is not said publicly, but known only too well, is that unions may have lost so much ground on the international playing field and have been so weakened over the past half century that they will no longer be able to provide an effective counterweight to the inequities of capitalism.

Posted by Info Center at 1:43 PM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Ronald Miller, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 3, Fall 2007

It's been thirty years since the U.S. Supreme Court decided Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that requiring nonunion members of a bargaining unit in the public sector to provide financial support for the collective bargaining activities of a union in the form of agency fee payments did not violate the nonmembers' First Amendment rights. However, three recent decisions, including one by the Supreme Court, make it clear that implementing an agency fee program that meets constitutional muster is still a troubling issue in a number of respects.

Posted by Info Center at 5:21 PM in Collective Bargaining | Labor Laws/Legislation | 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: Dan Seligman, Campaigns & Elections, Vol. 28 no. 10, October 2007
(subscription required)

American Viewpoint's client roster reads like a Republican Who's Who. ... So when Randall Gutermuth mentions his firm's latest client at parties, it tends to raise some eyebrows. "The National Education Association has over a million Republican members, so it makes a lot of sense to me that they'd be reaching out to those members," said Gutermuth, who is American Viewpoint's director of political affairs. The firm is helping the teachers' union reach out to those members--not a simple task for what many on the right view as the great bastion of liberalism. ... So the union landscape this cycle is some pretty unique terrain. Politicians are bypassing union leadership to court individual workers, and unions find themselves trying to court their own members. The question is: Will the grout that binds these workers hold them together politically for yet another campaign cycle?

Posted by Info Center at 5:32 PM in Labor Unions | Politics | 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: Martin H. Malin and Charles Kerchner, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 30 no. 3, Summer 2007

From the abstract:
The rapid increase in charter schools has been fueled by the view that traditional public schools have failed because of their monopoly on public education. Charter schools, freed from the bureaucratic regulation that dominates traditional public schools, are viewed as agents of change that will shock traditional public schools out of their complacency. Among the features of the failed status quo are teacher tenure, uniform salary grids and strict work rules, matters that teacher unions hold dear. Yet unions have begun organizing teachers in charter schools. This development prompts the question whether unionization and charter schools are compatible.

Posted by Info Center at 2:41 PM in Collective Bargaining | Collective Bargaining - Public Sector | Education | Labor Unions | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: David G. Blanchflower and Alex Bryson, Institute for the Study of Labor, IZA DP No. 3055, September 2007

This paper draws attention to an increase in the size of the union membership wage premium in the UK public sector relative to the private sector. We find the public sector membership wage premium is approximately double that in the private sector controlling for a full range of individual, job and workplace characteristics. Using data from the Labour Force Surveys of 1993-2006 the gap between the membership premium in the public and private sectors closes with the addition of three digit occupational controls, although significant wage premia remain in both sectors.

However, using data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004, the public sector union membership wage premium remains roughly twice the size of the private sector membership premium having accounted for workplace fixed effects, workers' occupations, their job characteristics, qualifications and worker demographics. Furthermore, the membership wage premium among workers covered by collective bargaining is only apparent in the public sector.

Posted by Info Center at 2:10 PM in Compensation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: United Auto Workers, August 31, 2007

From the press release:
The UAW announced today that a list of 2008 union-made cars, trucks, pickups, vans, CUVs and SUVs is now available on the UAW Web site at 2008 Union-Built Car and Truck Guide....

Vehicles from nine different manufacturers are produced in union-represented auto assembly plants in the United States and Canada, according to the list distributed today by the UAW. Union-made products are available in every price range and in every product category, including hybrids, clean diesels and energy-saving flex-fuel vehicles.

UAW-made vehicles, said Gettelfinger, have recently won top-quality rankings from J.D. Power and Associates and the University of Michigan Consumer Satisfaction Survey.

In addition, the most recent Harbour Report, a closely watched study of auto plant efficiency, showed that when union plants are compared with nonunion facilities that build the same type of vehicle, union plants are more productive in 12 out of 13 cases.

Posted by Info Center at 2:43 PM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Mark Harcourt and Helen Larri, WorkingUSA, Vol. 10 no. 3, September 2007
(subscription required)

The North American union certification system has not met the representation needs of most workers. In this essay, certification's effectiveness is critically examined. The exclusive representation and winner-take-all approach satisfies only two out of seven categories of union and nonunion workers with different representational preferences. The "winners" are those who successfully exercise their choice to be either unrepresented or represented by their most preferred union. All others are "losers." A compulsory proportional representation alternative is proposed which allows for both union and nonunion forms of representation, representative election based on proportional votes, and mandatory workplace representation. The merits of this alternative in balancing the needs of both voting majorities and minorities and protecting worker rights from management encroachment are discussed. Some preliminary suggestions on its implementation are offered.

Posted by Info Center at 5:49 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Donald W. Beachler, WorkingUSA, Vol. 10 no. 3, September 2007
(subscription required)

The conservative political preferences of many working class Americans have been the subject of much academic and popular analysis in recent years. This article investigates the voting behavior of union household residents in the 2004 presidential election. The source for this information is national and state exit polls from the 2004 election. There has been much debate about whether white working class support of Republicans is rooted in conservative cultural values. Despite ardent opposition by the Bush administration to the goals of organized labor, 46 percent of white voters who resided in union households voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election. The impact of race, religion, and gun ownership on the voting choice of labor households is investigated in an effort to provide an understanding of conservative voting by so many households affiliated with an interest group that is at odds with the Republicans.

Posted by Info Center at 5:44 PM in Elections | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Sharon Pinnock, WorkingUSA, Vol. 10 no. 3, September 2007
(subscription required)

All discussions with people on the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO (AFGE) campaign to organize federalized airport screeners--reclassified in 2006 as "Transportation Security Officers" (TSA), ultimately end with the adage that the mobilization effort is righteous. The author, who has organized over fifty organizing campaigns in nearly thirty years as a labor organizer, has never before worked on a unionization drive that feels as righteous as that to organize TSA workers.

Posted by Info Center at 5:38 PM in Labor Unions | Organizing | Permalink

Source: Glen Chochla, Labor Notes, # 342, September 2007

A coalition of health care unions in British Columbia (B.C.) scored a groundbreaking victory on June 8 when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down key provisions of the province's Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act (Bill 29). Overturning two lower court decisions and a number of its own decisions dating back to the 1980s, the country's top court ruled that collective bargaining is constitutionally protected as part of the guarantee of freedom of association in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Related articles:
Supreme Court of Canada says collective bargaining protected by Charter
Source: Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)

Posted by Info Center at 11:39 AM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: John Schmitt, Margy Waller, Shawn Fremstad, and Ben Zipperer, Center for Economic and Policy Research, August 2007

From press release:
Unionization substantially raises wages and benefits even in typically low-wage occupations, according to "Unions and Upward Mobility for Low- Wage Workers", a report released today by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Inclusion.

The report, which analyzed 15 of the lowest-paying occupations in the United States, found that unionized workers earned about 16 percent more than their non-union counterparts. Unionized workers in these same industries were also about 25 percentage points more likely to have health insurance or a pension plan.

For workers in these low-wage industries, unionization raised their wages, on average, about $1.75 per hour. In financial terms, the union effect on employer-provided health insurance and pensions was even larger.

Posted by Info Center at 11:57 AM in Benefits | Compensation | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Chuncui Velma Fan and Jeanne Batalova, Migration Policy Institute, August 2007

Labor unions have departed from their historical skepticism of immigrant workers as the overall number of wage and salary immigrant workers and their proportion in the labor unions have increased. Instead, labor unions have become an important force in support of proimmigrant policies.

This Spotlight looks at the available data on immigrant workers and unions, highlighting variations in union representation rates of immigrant workers across industrial sectors.

Posted by Info Center at 5:57 PM in Compensation | Immigration | Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Angelle Bergeron, Engineering News Record, Vol. 259, no. 4, July 30, 2007
(subscription required)

Hoping to boost its visibility in an open shop stronghold and bolster numbers and skill levels of a badly needed craft workforce, the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept. is bringing its message to the Hurricane Katrina recovery zone through a fast-track training and job placement center that will feed recruits to union apprentice programs for the first time.

Posted by Info Center at 5:13 PM in Labor Unions | Permalink

Source: Scott L. Cummings, UCLA School of Law, UCLA Public Law Series, Paper 7-01, July 3, 2007

This Article studies the role of law in the successful community-labor challenge to Wal-Mart’s first proposed Los Angeles-area Supercenter in the working-class city of Inglewood. It focuses on the use of legal and legislative challenges to mobilize opposition to Wal-Mart’s Inglewood initiative—a technique known as the “site fight” because of its focus on blocking Wal-Mart at a specific location. The aims of this Article are twofold. First, it seeks to understand the site fight in relation to broader shifts within the labor movement, which have driven some unions to promote pro-labor legal reform at the municipal government level. Part I therefore explores how labor leaders have responded to the limits of traditional unionism by pursuing an alternative model of labor activism that uses political opportunities available in the local development process to advocate policy reforms designed to increase union density.
…
Part II provides a detailed case study of the defining campaign of the anti-Wal-Mart movement—the Inglewood site fight—in which labor leaders allied with land use and environmental lawyers to oppose Supercenter plans on the ground that the negative community impacts outweighed consumer benefits.
…
Part III draws four central lessons from the Inglewood campaign.

Posted by Info Center at 4:27 PM in Labor Unions | Laws/Legislation | Permalink

Source: Robert Bussel, Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 32 no. 2, June 2007
(subscription required)

…To be sure, many legislators exhibited an appreciation of the union movement’s political role, especially its fundraising ability and capacity to mobilize volunteers for electoral activity. However, members of the United Labor Lobby believed that the focus on specific pieces of legislation and the logistics of campaign support tended to obscure political leaders’ understanding of the underlying values and motivations involved in shaping labor’s political priorities. As a result, the United Labor Lobby and LERC agreed to develop an educational program that would address this knowledge gap and provide Oregon legislators with a broader perspective regarding unions’ fundamental beliefs and their larger social role.

Posted by Info Center at 10:01 AM in Labor Unions | Lobbying | 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
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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

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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: Jelle Visser, Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 129 no. 1, January 2006

An analysis of "adjusted" union membership data in 24 countries yields past and present union density rates; the data provide explanatory factors for the differences and trends in unionization.

Posted by Info Center at 4:19 PM in Labor Unions |