Labor unions in the United States are legally
recognized as representatives of workers in many industries. The
most prominent unions are among
public
sector employees such as teachers and police.
Activity by labor union in the United States
today centers on collective bargaining over wages,
benefits, and working conditions for their membership and on
representing their members if management attempts to violate
contract provisions. Although much smaller compared to their
peak membership in the 1950s, unions also remain an important
political factor (especially within the
Democratic Party), both
through mobilization of their own memberships and through
coalitions with like-minded activist organizations. Today most
unions are aligned with one of two larger umbrella organizations:
the
AFL-CIO and the
Change to Win Federation, which
split from the
AFL-CIO in 2005. Both
advocate policies and legislation on behalf of workers in the
United States and Canada, and take an active role in politics. The
AFL-CIO is especially concerned with global
trade issues.American union membership in the private sector has in
recent years fallen under 9% — levels not seen since 1932. In
another example,
Construction
trades now only represent approximately 14% of the labor
market. The inability to prevent non-union companies from taking
significant
market share has undercut
union membership.
American unions remain an important political factor, both through
mobilization of their own memberships and through coalitions with
like-minded activist organizations around issues such as immigrant
rights, trade policy, health care, and
living wage campaigns. Unions allege that
employer incited opposition (including engaging in what is commonly
termed "union-busting": running "anti-union" campaigns, employing
"union-busters" - a.k.a. "union avoidance" consultants, or engaging
in unfair labor practices, like firing workers who support the
union, which is illegal) has contributed to this decline in
membership.
Unions are currently trying to reduce employers' influence over
workers' decisions to be represented by a union by advocating new
federal legislation that would allow workers to elect union
representation by signing cards, a process often referred to as
card check recognition. This proposed
legislation is known as the
Employee Free Choice Act. Under
this proposed Act, once a majority of employees in a workplace have
signed a card, the employer will be obligated to make a good-faith
effort to bargain a contract with the union. Significantly, the
card signing is to be performed in front of a union representative,
who can identify the signer. The current process established by
federal law requires at least 30% of employees to sign cards for
the union, then wait 45 to 90 days for a federal official to
conduct a secret ballot election in which 50% plus one of the
employees must vote for the union in order to obligate the employer
to bargain. Unions report that, under the present system, many
employers use the 45 to 90 day period to conduct anti-union
campaigns. Since the 2008 elections, the Employee Free Choice Act
now has the support of majorities in the House and Senate, and of
the President.
Union history
Labor unions today
Today most labor unions in the United States are members of one of
two larger umbrella organizations: the
American
Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations
(AFL-CIO) or the
Change to Win
Federation, which split from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Both
organizations advocate policies and legislation favorable to
workers in the United States and Canada, and take an active role in
politics favoring the Democratic party but not exclusively so. The
AFL-CIO is especially concerned with global
trade issues.
Recently unions have become a larger issue within the 2008
"Economic Crisis" with the three largest automakers seeking $50
Billion in loans in order to stay viable. According to some
Senators 'costly labor agreements' including pension and health
plans put the U.S. automakers at a disadvantage to foreign
companies resulting in their collapse. Others point out that the
United Auto Workers has made extensive concessions to the car
companies over the last twenty years in order to help the companies
remain competitive, and allege that the automakers' recent troubles
are better ascribed to other factors.
Private sector union members are tightly regulated by the
National Labor Relations Act
(NLRA), passed in 1935. The law is overseen by the
National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB), an
independent
federal agency. Public sector unions are regulated partly by
federal and partly by state laws. In general they have shown robust
growth rates, for wages and working conditions are set through
negotiations with elected local and state officials. The unions'
political power thus comes into play, and of course the local
government cannot threaten to move elsewhere, nor is there any
threat from foreign competition. In California the public sector
unions have been especially successful.
To join a traditional labor union, workers must either:
- be given voluntary recognition from their employer or
- have a majority of workers in a "bargaining unit" vote for
union representation.
In either case, the government must then certify the newly formed
union. Other forms of unionism include minority unionism,
Solidarity unionism, and the practices
of organizations such as the
Industrial Workers of the
World, which do not always follow traditional organizational
models.
Public sector worker unions are governed by labor laws and labor
boards in each of the 50 states. Northern states typically model
their laws and boards after the NLRA and the NLRB. In other states,
public workers have no right to establish a union as a legal
entity. (About 40% of public employees in the USA do not have the
right to organize a legally established union.)
Once the union has won the support of a majority of the bargaining
unit and is certified in a workplace, it has the sole authority to
negotiate the conditions of employment. However, under the NLRA, if
a minority of employees voted for a union, those employees can then
form a union which represents the rights of only those members who
voted for the union. This minority model was once widely used, but
was discarded when unions began to consistently win majority
support. Unions are beginning to revisit the "members only" model
of unionism because of new changes to labor law which unions view
as curbing workers' ability to organize.
The employer and the union write the terms and conditions of
employment in a legally binding contract. When disputes arise over
the contract, most contracts call for the parties to resolve their
differences through a grievance process to see if the dispute can
be mutually resolved. If the union and the employer still cannot
settle the matter, either party can choose to send the dispute to
arbitration, where the case is argued
before a neutral third party.
In the 1940s and 1950s links to organized crime were discovered in
U.S. unions, hurting their image.
Since the 1970s, union membership has been steadily declining in
the private-sector while growing in the public sector.
Right-to-work statutes forbid
unions from negotiating
agency shops.
Thus, while unions do exist in "
right-to-work" states, they are typically
weaker.
Members of labor unions enjoy "
Weingarten Rights." If management
questions the union member on a matter that may lead to discipline
or other changes in working conditions, union members can request
representation by a union representative.
Weingarten Rights are named for the first
Supreme Court decision to recognize those rights.
The NLRA goes farther in protecting the right of workers to
organize unions. It protects the right of workers to engage in any
"concerted activity" for mutual aid or protection. Thus, no union
connection is needed. Concerted activity "in its inception involves
only a speaker and a listener, for such activity is an
indispensable preliminary step to employee
self-organization."
Membership
Union membership had been steadily declining in the US since 1983.
In 2007, the labor department reported the first increase in union
memberships in 25 years and the largest increase since 1979. Most
of the recent gains in union membership have been in the service
sector while the number of unionized employees in the manufacturing
sector has declined. Most of the gains in the service sector have
come in West Coast states like California where union membership is
now at 16.7% compared with a national average of about 12.1%.
Union density (the percentage of workers belonging to unions) has
been declining since the late 1940s, however. Almost 36% of
American workers were represented by unions in 1945. Historically,
the rapid growth of public employee unions since the 1960s has
served to mask an even more dramatic decline in private-sector
union membership.
At the apex of union density in the 1940s, only about 9.8% of
public employees were represented by unions, while 33.9% of
private, non-agricultural workers had such representation. In this
decade, those proportions have essentially reversed, with 36% of
public workers being represented by unions while private sector
union density had plummeted to around 7%. Recently, workers have
increasingly chosen union membership. The US Bureau of Labor
Statistics most recent survey indicates that union membership in
the US has risen to 12.4% of all workers, from 12.1% in 2007.
Private sector union membership has rebounded as well, increasing
from 7.5% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2008.
Labor Education Programs
In the US, labor education programs such as the
Harvard Trade Union Program created in 1942 by Harvard
University professor
John T.
Dunlop sought to educate union
members to deal with important contemporary workplace and labor law
issues of the day.
The Harvard Trade Union Program is currently
part of a broader initiative at Harvard Law School
called the Labor and
Worklife Program that deals with a wide variety of labor and
employment issues from union pension investment funds to the
effects of nanotechnology on labor
markets and the workplace.
Jurisdiction
Labor union use the term
jurisdiction to refer to their claims to represent
workers who perform a certain type of work and the right of their
members to perform such work.
For example, the work of unloading
containerized cargo at United States
ports, which both the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union and the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters have claimed rightfully should be assigned to
workers they represent. A
jurisdictional strike is a concerted
refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right
to such job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed
work to members of another union or to unorganized workers.
Jurisdictional strikes occur most frequently in the United States
in the construction industry.
Unions also use jurisdiction to refer to the geographical
boundaries of their operations, as in those cases in which a
national or international union allocates the right to represent
workers among different local unions based on the place of those
workers' employment, either along geographical lines or by adopting
the boundaries between political jurisdictions.
Unions and Globalization
Declining Union Density: Disaggregating the Effect of
Globalization
As noted above, the relative strength and size of unions in the
United States has receded since the 1970s. Although most
industrialized countries have seen a drop in
unionization rates, the drop in union density (the unionized
proportion of the working population) has been more significant in
the United States than elsewhere. Popular explanations that pin
this decline to a reduced popularity of unionization among workers
and the general public appear to be misguided. In fact, public
approval of unions climbed between 1981 and 1988, with 61% of
Americans approving of unions in 1988. The rate of public
confidence in the United States during this same time differed
little from the analogous rate in other industrialized nations
(Sexton, 2003). Furthermore, dropping
unionization rates cannot be attributed
entirely to changing
market structures. In
fact, scholars have shown the tremendous complexity inherent in
explaining why this decline of union density.
A broad range of forces have been identified as potential
contributors to the drop in union density across countries. Sano
and Williamson (2008) outline quantitative studies that assess the
relevance of these factors across countries. The first relevant set
of factors relate to the receptiveness of unions’ institutional
environments. For example, the presence of a
Ghent system (where unions are responsible for
the distribution of unemployment insurance) and of centralized
collective bargaining (organized at a national or industry level as
opposed to local or firm level) have both been shown to give unions
more bargaining power and to correlate positively to higher rates
of union density. Furthermore, unions have enjoyed higher rates of
success in locations where they have greater access to the
workplace as an organizing space (as determined both by law and by
employer acceptance), and where they benefit from a
corporatist relationship to the state and are
thus allowed to participate more directly in the official
governance structure. Moreover, the fluctuations of business
cycles, particularly the rise and fall of unemployment rates and
inflation, are also closely linked to changes in union density
(Sano and Williamson, 2008).
The relatively coherent scholarly perspective on the role of
institutional openness to organized labor in determining union
strength is not mirrored in the analysis of political and economic
factors. For example, while Brady (2007) shows that
political parties play an expected role in
determining union strength, with
left-wing
governments generally promoting greater union density, other
scholars contest this finding by pointing out important
counterexamples and explaining the reverse causality inherent in
this relationship (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 1999).
More recently, as unions have become increasingly concerned with
the impacts of market integration on their well-being, scholars
have begun to assess whether popular concerns about a global “race
to the bottom” are reflected in cross-country comparisons of union
strength. These scholars use
foreign direct investment (FDI)
and the size of a country’s international trade as a percentage of
its
GDP to assess a country’s relative degree of
market integration. These researchers typically find that
globalization does affect union density, but
is dependent on other factors, such as unions’ access to the
workplace and the centralization of bargaining (Scruggs and Lange,
2002). Sano and Williamson (2008) find that globalization’s impact
is conditional upon a country’s labor history. In the United States
in particular, which has traditionally had relatively low levels of
union density, globalization did not appear to significantly affect
union density.
Studies focusing more narrowly on the U.S. labor movement
corroborate the comparative findings about the importance of
structural factors, but tend to emphasize the effects of changing
labor markets due to globalization to a greater extent. For
example, in their introduction to their book on effective
organizing strategies, Bronfenbrenner (1998) notes that in fact
changes in the economy, such as increased global competition,
capital flight, and the transitions
from a
manufacturing to a
service economy and to a greater reliance on
transitory and contingent workers, accounts for only a third of the
decline in union density. In addition, she claims that the federal
government in the 1980’s was largely responsible for giving
employers the perception that they could engage in aggressive
strategies to repress the formation of unions. Richard Freeman also
points to the role of repressive employer strategies in reducing
unionization, and highlights the way in which a state ideology of
anti-unionism tacitly accepted these strategies (Sexton, 2003).
Finally, however, Goldfield (2007) notes that the overall effects
of globalization on unionization in the particular case of the
United States may be understated in
econometric studies on the subject. He notes
that the threat of production shifts reduces unions’ bargaining
power even if it does not eliminate them, and also claims that most
of the effects of globalization on labor’s strength are indirect.
In fact, they are most present in change towards a
neoliberal political context that has promoted
the
deregulation and
privatization of some industries and accepted
increased employer flexibility in labor markets.
Union Strategies in the face of globalization
Regardless of the actual impact of market integration on union
density or on workers themselves, organized labor has been engaged
in a variety of strategies to limit the agenda of globalization and
to promote labor regulations in an international context. The most
prominent example of this has been the opposition of labor groups
to free trade initiatives such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and the Dominican Republic-Central American Free
Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA). In both cases, unions expressed strong
opposition to the agreements, but to some extent pushed for the
incorporation of basic labor standards in the agreement if one were
to pass (Bolle, 2005).
However, Mayer (2006) Mayer, Frederick. Interpreting NAFTA: The
Science and Art of Political Analysis. Columbia International
Affairs Online (2006)
/www.ciaonet.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/book/mayer/mayer06.html>
(3 Apr 2009) has shown that it was precisely unions’ opposition to
NAFTA overall that jeopardized organized labor’s ability to
influence the debate on labor standards in a significant way.
During Clinton’s presidential campaign, labor unions wanted NAFTA
to include a side deal to provide for a kind of international
social charter, a set of standards that would be enforceable both
in domestic courts and through international institutions. Kantor,
then U.S. trade representative, had strong ties to organized labor
and believed that he could get unions to come along with the
agreement, particularly if they were given a strong voice in the
negotiation process. However, when it became clear that Mexico
would not stand for this kind of an agreement, some critics from
the labor movement would not settle for any viable alternatives. In
response, part of the labor movement wanted to declare their open
opposition to the agreement, and to push for NAFTA’s rejection in
Congress (Mayer, 2006). Mayer, Frederick. Interpreting NAFTA: The
Science and Art of Political Analysis. Columbia International
Affairs Online
(2006)/www.ciaonet.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/book/mayer/mayer06.html>
(3 Apr 2009) Ultimately, the ambivalence of labor groups led those
within the Administration who supported NAFTA to believe that
strengthening NAFTA’s labor side agreement too much would cost more
votes among Republicans than it would garner among Democrats, and
would make it harder for the United States to elicit support from
Mexico (Cameron and Tomlin, 2000).
Nevertheless, Graubart (2008) shows that, despite unions’ open
disappointment with the outcome of this labor-side negotiation,
labor activists, including the AFL-CIO have used the side
agreement’s citizen petition process to highlight ongoing political
campaigns and struggles in their home countries. He claims that
despite the relative weakness of the legal provisions themselves,
the side-agreement has served a legitimizing functioning, giving
certain social struggles a new kind of standing.
Furthermore, unions have recently been engaged in a developing
field of transnational labor regulation embodied in corporate codes
of conduct. However, O’Brien (2002) notes that unions have been
only peripherally involved in this process, and remain ambivalent
about its potential effects. They worry that these codes could have
legitimizing effects on companies that don’t actually live up to
good practices, and that companies could use codes to excuse or
distract attention from the repression of unions. Braun and
Gearhart (2008) note that although unions do participate in the
structure of a number of these agreements, their original interest
in codes of conduct differed from the interests of human rights and
other non-governmental activists. They believed that codes of
conduct would be important first steps in creating written
principles that a company would be compelled to comply with in
later organizing contracts, but did not foresee the establishment
of monitoring systems such as the Fair Labor Association. These
authors point out that are motivated by power, want to gain insider
status politically and are accountable to a constituency that
requires them to provide them with direct benefits. In contrast,
activists from the non-governmental sector are motivated by ideals,
are free of accountability and gain legitimacy from being political
outsiders. Therefore, the interests of unions are not likely to
align well with the interests of those who draft and monitor
corporate codes of conduct.
Finally, unions have made some attempts to organize across borders.
In fact, Eder (2002) notes that transnational organizing is not a
new phenomenon but has been facilitated by technological change.
Nevertheless, he claims that while unions pay lip service to global
solidarity, they still act largely in their national self-interest.
He argues that unions in the global North are becoming increasingly
depoliticized while those in the South grow politically, and that
global differentiation of production processes leads to divergent
strategies and interests in different regions of the world. These
structural differences tend to hinder effective global solidarity.
However, in light of the weakness of international labor, Herod
(2002) notes that globalization of production need not be met by a
globalization of union strategies in order to be contained. In
fact, he points out that local strategies, such as the United Auto
Workers’ strike against General Motors in 1998, can sometimes
effectively interrupt global production processes in ways that they
could not before the advent of widespread market integration. Thus,
workers need not be connected organizationally to others around the
world to effectively influence the behavior of a transnational
corporation.
See also
Notes
-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081118/ap_on_go_co/congress_autos
- NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251 (1975); Tate
& Renner Attorneys at Law
- Root-Carlin, Inc., 92 NLRB 1313, 27 LRRM, 1235, citing NLRB v.
City Yellow Cab Co. (6th Cir. 1965), 344 F.2d 575, 582; www.workplacefairness.org
- http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
- Hunt, James W. and Strongin, Patricia K. The Law of the
Workplace: Rights of Employers and Employees. 3rd ed.
Washington, D.C.: BNA Books, 1994. ISBN 0871798417; Whitney,
Nathaniel Rugges. Jurisdiction in American Building-Trades
Unions. Charleston, S.C.: BiblioBazaar, 2008 (originally
published 1914). ISBN 055945399X
- Sexton, Patricia Cayo. “The Decline of the Labor Movement.” The
Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts. Goodwin, Jeff and
James M. Jasper, eds. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003
- Sano, Joelle and John B. Williamson. (2008) “Factors Affecting
Union Decline and their Implications for Labor Reform.”
International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 49: 479-500
- Sano, Joelle and John B. Williamson. (2008) “Factors Affecting
Union Decline and their Implications for Labor Reform.”
International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 49: 479-500
- Ebbinghaus, B. and Visser, J. (1999) "When Institutions Matter.
Union Growth and Decline in Western Europe, 1950–1995", European
Sociological Review 15(2): 135–58
- Scruggs, L. and Lange, P. (2002) ‘Where Have all the Members
Gone? Globalizations, Institutions, and Union Density’, The Journal
of Politics 64(1): 126–53.
- Sano, Joelle and John B. Williamson. (2008) “Factors Affecting
Union Decline and their Implications for Labor Reform.”
International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 49: 479-500.
- Bronfenbrenner, Kate. Organizing to Win: New Research on Union
Strategies. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1998.
- Goldfield, Michael. “The impact of globalization and
neoliberalism on the decline of organized labour in the United
States.” Labor, Globalization and the State: Workers, women and
migrants confront neoliberalism. Banerjee, Debdas and Michael
Goldfield, eds. London: Routledge, 2007.
- Bolle, Mary Jane. “DR-CAFTA Labor Rights Issues.” Congressional
Research Service Report for Congress. Order Code RS22159. 8 Jul
2005.
- Cameron, Maxwell A. and Brian W. Tomlin. The Making of NAFTA:
How the Deal was Done. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2000.
- Graubart, Jonathan. Legalizing Transnational Activism: The
Struggle to Gain Social Change from NAFTA’s Citizen Petitions.
University Park, PA; The Pennsylvania State University Press,
2008.
- O’Brien, Robert. “The varied paths to minimum global labour
standards.” Global Unions? Theory and Strategies of organized
labour in the global political economy. Harrod, Jeffrey and Robert
O’Brien, eds. London: Routledge, 2002.
- Eder, Mine. “The constraints on labour internationalism:
contradictions and prospects.” Global Unions? Theory and Strategies
of organized labour in the global political economy. Harrod,
Jeffrey and Robert O’Brien, eds. London: Routledge, 2002.
- Herod, Andrew. “Organizing globally, organizing locally: union
spatial strategy in a global economy.” Global Unions? Theory and
Strategies of organized labour in the global political economy.
Harrod, Jeffrey and Robert O’Brien, eds. London: Routledge,
2002.
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