Monographs

Blueprint for Change: A National Assessment of Winning Union Organizing Strategies

Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:08:27 PDT

In the last seven years the AFL-CIO has put forth an immense effort to facilitate, support, and encourage organizing initiatives by all affiliates. Although to date progress has been much slower than the leadership of the labor movement had hoped, more recently there have been some signs that those efforts are beginning to bear fruit. A growing number of unions are putting more resources into organizing, recruiting and training more organizers, running more organizing campaigns, winning more elections and voluntary recognitions, and winning them in larger units.

Yet, despite all the new initiatives and resources being devoted to organizing and all the talk of "changing to organize," American unions today are at best standing still. Massive employment losses in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and airline industries have eliminated hundreds of thousands of union jobs, raising the bar even higher for the number of new workers needed to maintain current union density, much less grow. At the same time, the political climate for organizing has become ever more hostile as the threat of terrorism and the fog of war have been used to justify a full scale attack on civil liberties, federal sector unions, immigrant workers, and organizing and collective bargaining rights.

Even in this climate, some unions, in some industries, have still managed to make major organizing gains, despite intensive employer opposition. In just the last several years we have witnessed significant victories such as CWA at Cingular Wireless, IFPTE at Boeing, UAW at New York University, PACE at Imerys, SEIU at Catholic Healthcare West, UNITE at Brylane, and HERE in the Las Vegas hotels. Although there was great variation in the industry, workforce, union, and company characteristics in each of these campaigns, still a pattern becomes evident—the unions that are most successful at organizing run fundamentally different campaigns, in both quality and intensity, than those that are less successful.

In this paper we focus on these fundamental differences in the nature of winning and losing campaigns which provide us with a blueprint for the kinds of comprehensive organizing strategies that are required to win across a wide range of organizing environments and company and unit characteristics. We also look at the strategic, organizational, and cultural changes the U.S. labor movement must make in order to be able to mount these more comprehensive campaigns and make the gains necessary to significantly increase union density and the political and economic power that goes with it.

Human Resource Strategy for Labor Unions: Oxymoron, Chimera or Contributor to Revival

Ken Margolies — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:12:43 PDT

While the need for revival strategies for the labor movement has stimulated much discussion and research, little or no attention has been paid to the role of HR strategies for unions. This paper addresses the question, “What are appropriate HR strategies for labor unions in this time of crisis?” Research for this paper is largely inductive, qualitative and action research consisting of interviewing as well as some surveying and extensive literature review. Preliminary findings, pending research on broader samples of the labor movement and more prolonged review of emerging union HR strategies, suggest that unions are in great need of more effective HR strategies with a systems approach. Unions generally, by their own accounts, are lacking in the area of staff accountability and development; union officials generally resist embracing their management responsibilities; training for managers within unions is rare; and internal union politics play a significant complicating role in all aspects of HR within unions.

Labor Rights in Haiti

Lance Compa — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:54:37 PDT

[Excerpt] This study of labor rights in Haiti was conducted on behalf of the International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund by Lance Compa, Washington Representative of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), who is the principal author of this report. It includes findings from a field investigation in Haiti in July 1988, and from interviews and further information supplied by Haitian trade unionists throughout 1988 and early 1989. This report also draws on information developed by a delegation of U.S. unionists and labor educators who visited Haiti July 24-31, 1988, under the sponsorship of the Washington Office on Haiti.

Trade’s Hidden Costs: Worker Rights in a Changing World Economy

John Cavanagh et al. — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:50:06 PDT

[Excerpt] For decades, the U.S. foreign assistance program has sought with limited results to further economic development and growth in Third World countries. We have witnessed some countries making real progress toward development through industrialization, only to find more of their people trapped in hunger and poverty. Hopefully, it is apparent that for development to be effective, it must benefit the broadest sectors of the population within any society.

Why are worker rights crucial to the development process? The capacity to form unions and to bargain collectively to achieve higher wages and safer working conditions is essential to the overall struggle of working people everywhere to achieve minimally decent living standards and to overcome hunger and poverty. The denial of worker rights, especially in Third World countries, tends to perpetuate poverty, to limit the benefits of economic development and growth to narrow, privileged elites and to sow the seeds of social instability and political rebellion.