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Twilight for organized labor
Troy, Leo
Journal of Labor Research; Spring 2001; 22, 2; ProQuest
pg. 245
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What Has Happened to the US Labor Movement? Union Decline and Renewal
Author(s): Dan Clawson and Mary Ann Clawson
Source: Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 95-119
Published by: Annual Reviews
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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 1999. 25.95-119
Copyright ? 1999 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE
US LABOR MOVEMENT? Union
Decline and Renewal
Dan Clawson1 and Mary Ann Clawson2
‘Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst,
Massachusetts 01003; e-mail: clawson@sadri.umass.edu, and 2Department of
Sociology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06459; e-mail:
mclawson@wesleyan.edu
KEY WORDS: trade unions, labor organizing, AFL-CIO, employer anti-union offensive,
labor movement future
ABSTRACT
For many years, US trade unions declined in union density, organizing
pacity, level of strike activity, and political effectiveness. Labor’s decline
variously attributed to demographic factors, inaction by unions themselv
the state and legal system, globalization, neoliberalism, and the employer
fensive that ended a labor-capital accord. The AFL-CIO New Voice lead
ship elected in 1995, headed by John Sweeney, seeks to reverse these tren
and transform the labor movement. Innovative organizing, emphasizing t
use of rank-and-file intensive tactics, substantially increases union succ
variants include union building, immigrant organizing, feminist approach
and industry-wide non-National Labor Relations Board (or nonboard) o
ganizing. The labor movement must also deal with participatory mana
ment or employee involvement programs, while experimenting with n
forms, including occupational unionism, community organizing, an
strengthened alliances with other social movements.
INTRODUCTION
In 1995, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial
tions (AFL-CIO), the body that unites most United States unions int
95
0360-0572/99/0815-0095$08.00
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96 CLAWSON & CLAWSON
ated organization, experienced its first contested election, in wh
gent slate won, and the victors, led by John Sweeney as presiden
their intent to transform the labor movement (Sweeney 1996,
Only rarely does a massive institution directly and publicly confr
tre of its own demise; even more rarely does a bureaucratic organ
one with social movement origins, attempt rejuvenation through
activist roots. This moment of critique and attempted reconstruct
similar response from social scientists, including sociologists, w
voted surprisingly little attention to the labor movement.
As a discipline centrally concerned with processes of institution
ing, social movement activism, and class differentiation and dom
relative neglect is striking. Even scholars who study class or the
tend to neglect the importance of group processes of struggle, “f
omized individual workers as the unit of analysis” (Lembcke et
This emphasis has both impoverished sociology and led labor st
cede from the intellectual scene, principally becoming a professi
training union officials and negotiators” (Lembcke et al 1994:11
standing work of the past ten to fifteen years exemplifies the
renewed focus on the labor movement; four recent collections
notable as introductions, each including the work of both academ
scholars (Bronfenbrenner et al 1998, Fraser & Freeman 1997, Fr
1994, Mantsios 1998; for a review of earlier work, see Freem
1984 and Cornfield 1991).
Unions provide a laboratory for the analysis of a variety of so
ena. Thirteen million members are in AFL-CIO unions, includin
million women, two million African Americans, and one million
with many additional members in nonfederated organizations like
Education Association. Even at the present time, strikes involve s
members per year, and unions successfully organize more than 2
ers yearly, with perhaps an equivalent number involved in unsucc
izing campaigns. These actions offer social movement scholars a
resource: the opportunity for systematic study of widely practic
highly risky, forms of collective action. At the same time, labor stu
labor movement can only profit from contact with sociology’s br
tualization and more explicit theorizing.
The overriding reality that frames the recent history of the labo
and the social science literature we examine is a dramatic chang
tions between business and unions. Until recently, the dominant s
spective assumed the existence of a postwar “accord” between m
and labor, an arrangement whereby business accepted union
became the de facto allies of management, helping to regula
worker discontent (Aronowitz 1973, Burawoy 1979, Fantasia 198
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LABOR MOVEMENT TRANSFORMATION 97
Cloward 1977). For many critics on the left, the accord meant that
lost their oppositional character, while capital valued the benefits co
a unionized workforce.
This understanding has been shaken by events of the late 1970s and early
1980s, when corporate forces assumed a far more confrontational stance, and
unions found themselves under relentless attack. The vehemence of the em-
ployer mobilization suggests that the accord may never have been as fully accepted by capital as many had supposed, that instead capital may simply have
recognized the strength of labor and concluded that certain kinds of opposition
were not (then) feasible.
The labor movement has responded to this assault in a variety of ways.
Some approaches call for a new militancy, supported by innovative and aggressive organizing to confront employer opposition, while others seek ways
to recreate the accord and reestablish unions as valued partners. This essay
considers directions for the future of the movement by examining explanations
for union decline and initiatives for labor’s revitalization.
UNION DECLINE
The fact of union decline is beyond dispute. Private sector union de
percentage of the labor force in unions) declined from 39% in 1954
day. Decline in membership strength has been accompanied during
two decades by a larger loss of efficacy. From 1969 to 1979, strik
more than 950,000 workers in every year; from 1987 to 1996, by co
spite a larger labor force, strikes never involved even half a million
Many more strikes were broken, with employees losing their jobs.
to 1980, union wage settlements almost always involved wage
thereafter, unions frequently made concessions on both wages and
(Griffin et al 1990, Moody 1988:165-91, Wrenn 1985). Political
unions had diminishing clout, in part because of increasing Republi
nance, but even more so because unions exercised less and less lever
the Democratic party.
Five major perspectives, found both within the labor movement
scholars, attempt to explain such changes. These focus respecti
demographic changes, (b) the role of the union itself as an instituti
state, especially the legal system, (d) globalization and neoliberalis
the employer anti-union offensive.
Demographic Factors
Even with no change in unions or the legal climate, union strength
cline if unions were strong in population groups and sectors of th
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98 CLAWSON & CLAWSON
that were shrinking. Depending on the time period studied, the m
used, and the comprehensiveness of the factors taken into account,
lieve that structural and compositional factors account for 20% to
decrease in union density (Dickens & Leonard 1985, Farber 199
1985, Goldfield 1987, Western 1997). Many of the significant
widely discussed and easily understood: geographic shifts from the
the Sunbelt, occupational shifts from blue collar to white collar, and
the gender distribution of the work force. Other factors are less ob
ern’s (1997:120) analyses indicate that the tremendous growth in th
force explains nearly 9 percentage points of the 15% postwar Amer
decline, because a rapidly growing labor force diminishes union den
unions make huge efforts to organize new workers. Although We
vides probably the best examination of these factors, he himself pref
tional explanations, criticizing the assumption of the econometric
that “the key agents are workers and employers, rather than uni
leads, he says, to an institutionally “thin view of labor movemen
fails to recognize the central role of”organizing effort and the activ
tion of shared interests” (1997:103).
The Union Itself
If, as Western suggests, unionization results from active effort, th
movement must bear a significant share of the blame for its own de
field (1987:208) defines the problem as a lack of will: “Unions can p
necessary effort to win when they have to” but “most of the time..
out this sufficient effort.” An AFL-CIO report similarly argues, “in
ganizing, unions hunkered down” and “collectively chose the shor
strategy of trying to protect current contracts of members instead o
new members” (AFL-CIO 1996:5). In consequence, the most dynam
of the economy, including service occupations “employing large n
women and people of color,” as well as “the growing ranks of pro
technical, and white collar employees, except for those in the publ
were “left nearly untouched by union activity” during the postwar
labor’s greatest strength (Bronfenbrenner et al 1998:5-6).
The flawed record of unions vis a vis women and racial minorities is re-
flected not only in failures of organizing, but by an internal reluctance or inability to address issues raised by the feminist and civil rights movements.
Women’s presence as union members, for example, falls short of their presence in the labor force as a whole, while gains in leadership have been “quite
modest” in relation to gains in membership (Milkman 1985:302, Melcher et al
1992, Cornfield 1993, Roby 1995). More fundamentally, Milkman argues,
women have been organized not as women, but “as members of occupational
groups which happened to be largely female in composition,” with the result
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LABOR MOVEMENT TRANSFORMATION 99
that women were “now squarely in, but generally still not of the labo
ment” (Milkman 1985:302). To the extent that men and women differ
ferred cultural styles and forms of leadership, unions have tended to ref
to value male (often macho) approaches (Cobble 1993, Feldberg 198
1988).
While the late 1960s saw the emergence of the League of Revolutionary
Black Workers as a rank-and-file protest movement (Geschwender 1977),
more recent responses such as the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists have been largely concentrated among
elected officials and staff, focusing, in the case of CLUW, on placing more
women in leadership positions “without challenging the basic structure or
character of the labor movement” (Milkman 1985:305).
Labor became increasingly distant from other social movements, and unions were not seen-either by unions themselves or by social movement activists-as a primary means of addressing the issues raised by the civil rights,
feminist, and environmental movements. Instead these concerns were primarily addressed through new legal rights, governmental regulation, new social
movement organizations, and class action lawsuits. Unions participated in
these processes but were not generally regarded as crucial actors.
The decline of organizing in the postwar era coincides with an increased focus on contract negotiation and the enforcement of work rules through the
grievance system, both of which led to an increase in union staff. Within this
framework, the union’s shop-floor presence was expressed primarily through
its negotiation of work rules and their enforcement through the grievance procedure. Grievances were virtually the only way for workers to address working
conditions and conflicts with supervisors within a Taylorist organization of
production; the grievance procedure accomplishes this through a multi-step,
quasi-judicial process that strengthens the role of staff and attenuates workers’
involvement (Spencer 1977). Burawoy (1979:110) notes the individualizing
effect of the grievance process: “Each time a collective grievance or an issue of
principle outside the contract, affecting the entire membership… is raised” the
union representative responded “Have you got a grievance? … If you haven’t,
give the floor to someone else.”
The limitations of the staff-driven union were also evident in politics.
Form’s (1995) detailed study of Ohio demonstrates that “most union officials
think they have a political education program, but most members are not aware
of it” (p. 255). Four-fifths were not aware of their union’s political action
program (p. 251), and very few members were involved in electoral and party
activities. Croteau (1995) argues workers hold many progressive political
views, but-for a variety of reasons, with the weakness of unions one of the
most important-workers doubt their ability to have a political impact and
hence see little point in getting involved.
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100 CLAWSON & CLAWSON
Proponents of an institutional explanation of union decline emph
internal factors rendered unions less likely to devote energy and re
the task of organizing, and less likely to present to potential membe
of a dynamic, compelling movement organization. This is, however,
active process; unions did not devote more energy and resources to
in part because of the powerful barriers to effective organizing that
outside of the union itself, barriers rooted in labor law and in the
resourcefulness of employer opposition to unionization.
The State and Legal System
The United States has not had a social democratic or labor party, an
frame creates more difficult conditions for unions here than in vir
other democracy. The stated purpose of the New Deal industria
system was to institutionalize relations between employers and wo
thus provide them with a mechanism, collective bargaining, for r
differences with minimal disruption (McCammon 1990, 1993, 1994
are part of a legal regime that shapes and channels worker organizat
tivism through specification of legally permissible and impermiss
of collective action and through the law’s very definition of workp
sentation.
Schizophrenia is the dominant characteristic of US labor law. For union
recognition, American labor law grants/guarantees workers the right to “self-
organize” via the formation of unions, a right realized through the federally
mandated and supervised representation election that establishes a particular
union as the sole legally recognized bargaining agent for that workplace (or
bargaining unit). At the same time, the law protects the right of employers to
influence and intervene in this process: “Unique among industrial democracies, US labor law allows employers actively to oppose their employees’ deci-
sion to unionize” (Comstock & Fox 1994:90, Tomlins 1985), and a series of
court and administrative decisions have further narrowed employee-union
rights while expanding employer rights (Brody 1997, Gross 1995). A similar
split operates in regard to strikes: Workers are guaranteed the right to strike
and may not be penalized for doing so, but employers are guaranteed the right
to maintain production during a strike and may hire permanent replacement
workers. Thus, workers may not be fired for engaging in a strike, but they may
be permanently replaced-an academic distinction at best (Fantasia 1993).
Globalization and Neoliberalism
The US legal system creates uniquely unfavorable conditions for organizing
striking, but this framework takes on greater significance in the context of tw
1970s changes-a capitalist offensive that involved both political mobili
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LABOR MOVEMENT TRANSFORMATION 101
tion and relentless hostility to unions (Clawson &Clawson 1987), and
plex of economic changes generally referred to as globalization, but
also includes a hegemonic neoliberal discourse and the ideological triu
the market over all alternative forms of structuring activity.
Western (1997) finds that, in advanced industrial societies, throug
1970s, the trajectory of union strength varied from one country to an
13 of the 18 countries studied, for example, union density increased du
1970s-with the United States the most notable exception. As globaliz
the market, and neoliberalism took hold in the 1980s, however, unio
weakened in almost all advanced industrial societies. An important con
ing factor was the fragmentation of labor markets, as bargaining mov
an industry to a company level, or from a company to a plant level, wi
ers increasingly competing against one another (Moody 1988). Silver
confirms a sharp drop in labor unrest in core countries in the 1980s b
that this is paired with a slight rise in labor unrest in the semiperiphe
sharp rise in the periphery; she argues labor movements are weakened
of capital emigration and strengthened in areas of capital in-migratio
Globalization hurts unions in at least two ways. First, “a growing
tion of core workers ar …
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