Documents Labor Studies Journal 40 results

"Industrial workers and their organizations are faced with two interrelated crises as the continued reorganization of production shutters plants and devastates communities while the existential threat of climate change grows. Addressing both crises at once often seems impossible. This article offers a critical analysis of a campaign by unionists and community allies to confront both crises at once, to see their shuttering auto plant taken over and retooled for socially useful production. The failure of the campaign to win its demands or build a critical mass of support within the union emphasizes the importance and difficulty of inspiring workers to imagine radical alternatives during times of crisis."

"In labor, climate and social movement organizing contexts, calls have been made for the importance of political education; yet the meaning of political education is often left poorly defined. This article argues that what is usually being called for is a model of radical (political) education. Using the example of political education developed by the UK trade union movement to address the climate crisis, the article suggests how a model of radical education can help to identify and understand gaps and limitations in attempts to develop effective political education for building power to create a more just and sustainable world."

"This article explores public sector labor relations in Wisconsin after the 2011 “uprising” and subsequent attempts to recall public officials, including the governor. While unions there have faced catastrophic setbacks and confront an uncertain future, the potential exists for Wisconsin to forge a new approach to escape the confines of the “service model,” which has left unions as “houses of straw.” If Wisconsin public sector unions can combine lessons from history and nonbargaining states with comprehensive plans for organizational culture change, a crucially important model could take shape for the entire U.S. labor movement. "

"This article examines the early economic track record of Indiana's “right-to-work” (RTW) law on labor market outcomes. It analyzes various labor market metrics to compare the experience in Indiana relative to nine neighboring states, as well as to the United States in the aggregate. Data are analyzed both 36 months before and 36 months after Indiana passed RTW. Initial “difference-in-difference” estimates find that the labor market performance of Indiana has not surpassed that of neighboring states following passage of the law, contrary to the claims promised by its proponents. Wage and employment growth in Indiana's construction industry, in particular, has fallen significantly behind the rest of the region. Regression analyses are subsequently performed, which conclude that RTW's unique effect has been to lower hourly wages in the state economy by 1.1 to 1.5 percent on average and have little to no impact on employment. The combination of effects results in state income tax revenues that are annually $16 to $52 million lower than they would be in the absence of the RTW policy. "

"The passage of Right to Work (RTW) legislation in Michigan was a surprise to many, given its relatively high unionization rate. Previous studies that examine state RTW status and the process of passing RTW legislation are not a good fit for the events in Michigan. Instead, single-party Republican control of state government and a wealthy donor who prioritized RTW combined to introduce legislation, pass it, and sign it into law in a one-week period. Contextual factors helped create an opportunity for this campaign to succeed. The Michigan experience raises questions about long-term strategies for labor in similar environments in the era of big-money donors."

"This article provides a framework for explaining why the right-to-work (RTW) movement is thriving in the twenty-first century's second decade while outlining how RTW has negatively impacted the U.S. trade union movement. I argue that the recent growth of the RTW movement is due to the Southernization of U.S. labor relations that has led to not only an assault on private sector unionism but on public employee unionism as well. After presenting recent developments concerning RTW legislation, the roots of the Southernization of U.S. labor relations are discussed followed by sections outlining the historical development of the Southernization of both the U.S. working class and U.S. politics before presenting the effects of the Southernization of U.S. labor relations. The article's penultimate section reports on the major economic effects of RTW legislation, primarily through outlining three RTW hypotheses and the associated empirical evidence. The final section proposes a methodology for potentially dealing with the RTW movement given the Southernization of U.S. labor relations."

"While considerable efforts have been made by legislators, business associations, and political organizations to pass right-to-work (RTW) laws in states across the country, the empirical evidence on the effect of adopting an RTW law on labor market outcomes and state budgets is both varied and mixed. This article provides a forecast on the effect of RTW laws on important labor market outcomes—including earnings, employment, unionization, and inequality. It also investigates RTW's impacts on two particularly affected industries (manufacturing and construction) and three demographic groups (African-American, Latino/a, and female workers). The findings are subsequently applied to the state of Illinois to project the potential law's impact on Illinois workers and on the state's tax revenues. By and large, as a policy prescription, RTW would generate harmful effects to Illinois' economy, lower its capacity to provide essential public services and degrade the quality and condition of the state's labor force."

"Workers exercise three distinct types of power when they cooperate in transnational campaigns: structural, institutional, and coalitional power. These power types entail the capacity to physically disrupt an employer's operations, hold an employer accountable through legal or regulatory institutions, and mobilize nonlabor stakeholders to whom the employer must respond. In developing a framework for understanding workers' power in the global economy, this article integrates significant works in labor geography, comparative institutional analysis, and union revitalization studies while demonstrating how workers' embeddedness in global production networks, national institutional frameworks, and social networks enables them to challenge employers on the international scale."