Rekindling the Movement: Labor's Quest for Relevance in the 21st Century (original) (raw)

The Future of American Labor: Reinventing Unions

Contexts, 2004

The U.S. labor movement is in deep trouble. Many assume that union decline is irreversible—the result of changes in the nature of work and unions' inability to adapt. However, American laws and corporate resistance are also responsible. New union tactics and militancy point toward a possible revival of a workers' movement.

Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Union Revitalization in the American Labor Movement

American Journal of Sociology, 2000

This article addresses the question of how social movement organizations are able to break out of bureaucratic conservatism. In-depth interviews with union organizers and other data are used to identify the sources of radical transformation in labor organizations by comparing local unions that have substantially altered their goals and tactics with those that have changed little. This analysis highlights three factors: the occurrence of a political crisis in the local leading to new leadership, the presence of leaders with activist experience outside the labor movement who interpret the decline of labor's power as a mandate to change, and the influence of the international union in favor of innovation. The article concludes by drawing out the theoretical implications of the finding that bureaucratic conservatism can sometimes be overcome in mature social movements.

Is the Secret to Labor's Future in Its Past

Workingusa, 2002

In 1995 the AFL-CIO conducted the first contested election for national labor federation leadership since J ohn L . Lewis unsuc cessf ully ch allenge d Sam uel Go mper s for comm and o f the A FL in 1921. The contest occurred in the wake of decades-long decline for organized labor --falling union density; eroding real wages and living standards; growing income inequality; corporate restructuring and down-sizing; deindust rialization, capital flight and globalization; declining political influence. Union density which peaked at 35 % in 1954 has been dropping continuously since the mid-'50s merger of the AFL and CIO. Private sector d ensity is lower today (9%) than at any time since the first decade of the 20th century (5.8% in 1910). The real wonder is that it took so long for revolt to occur in the house of

Building Social Movement Unionism: The Transformation of the American Labor Movement

2001

L abor movements long in decline in many industrial democracies are now on the move. They are developing new strategies, pursuing internal reform, restructuring, and seeking new ways to gain members and influence. This is an exciting and, in some ways, unexpected development, and it is an important one in this global era in which governments and unions appear to have lost much of their power in regulating markets. The modernization and revival of national labor movements, which has expanded through cross-national collaboration, could offer a much-needed democratic counterweight to the growing power of capital in todays world economy. The "battle in Seattle" in late 1999 offered a dramatic picture of the alliances and active labor participation that could shape a new democratic force on the global stage.

ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN LABOR

Workingusa, 2005

There is now a vigorous debate, in the era of labor's decline, concerning the future of the American unions. Some have argued that revitalization requires the replacement of the so-called service model of unionism which focuses mainly on meeting the needs of existing members by an "organizing" model that emphasizes expanding membership. This article argues that, even if organizing is important, the main problem is that unions have remained subordinate to capital and to the Democratic Party. Unions need to regain their independence, but the top leaders are probably not capable of reversing the transformation of members into clients. What is needed is an independent labor-oriented catalyst that raises the question of the democratization of the labor movement, chiefly from the bottom.

American Labor: A Movement Again?

Monthly Review, 1997

Institute, a small side-show under predecessor Lane Kirkland, has become the federation's centerpiece. The "01," as it is known, has recruited scores of young people and has helped kindle an interest in unions among the young and not-soyoung of both working class and middle class backgrounds. Union Summer provided what the LA Weekly called "Class Struggle 101" for a thousand or so young people, many of whom say their lives were changed forever. The targets of the new organizing efforts taking shape in some of the AFL-CIO affiliates are low-wage workers, frequently women, people of

DENSITY MATTERS: THE UNION DENSITY BIAS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR LABOR MOVEMENT REVITALIZATION

After more than a decade of analyzing efforts to revitalize the U.S. labor movement, many have concluded that organized labor must become a movement again. Nevertheless, most analyses remain based on the traditional view that labor power is derived solely from the portion of the labor market that is unionized. This fact is illustrated by the continued use of union density as the primary means of assessing labor movement strength. This article examines this " density bias " and ways that it constrains analyses of labor revitalization— obscuring alternative sources of movement power, excluding community based labor organizations, and oversimplifying assessments of organizing processes. The article highlights the need for a critical assessment of conventional wisdom in labor studies and argues that treating labor as a social movement may generate new research questions and move theorizing in promising new directions. For decades, organized labor in the United States has been in a state of crisis. For students of the labor movement, the primary piece of evidence to support this assessment is the low rate of union density. In 2006, the portion of the workforce that was unionized stood at just 12 percent, representing the nadir of a decades-long decline (BLS 2007). For a dozen years, labor scholars, activists, and observers have sought ways to reverse this trend. These efforts have generated a vibrant collection of published research and theorizing about the prospects for a labor movement renaissance. Those working in this nascent field of labor revitalization are asking some difficult questions, reexamining old assumptions, and embracing strategic and analytic innovation. In a recent review of this discourse, Lowell Turner applauds these efforts, claiming, " revitalization researchers seek to cast new light on big questions " (Turner 2005: 394). Indeed, many of the basic assumptions on which orthodox labor studies have been grounded are being reexamined. Revitalization scholars have identified the need for new strategic orientations, attempted to broaden labor's traditional membership base, discovered more effective union organizing tactics, and explored the impact of globalization on the prospects of labor renewal. Yet, despite all of this self-examination, the conventional wisdom regarding the source of labor movement power has not been scrutinized. For scholars and practitioners alike, it is taken for granted that labor movement power rises and falls along with union density. This tacit assumption is so widely accepted that it appears to be self-evident that labor's transformation hinges on dramatically increasing the unionized share of the workforce. But given the current context in which labor movement scholars are revisiting the " big questions, " it is fair to challenge this assumption and to ask whether increasing union density is in fact necessary for labor movement revitalization. In the pages that follow, I take up this question and examine the analytic consequences of relying on union density as the principal means of assessing labor movement power and potential. I