Abstract
This study analyzes U.S. union organizing activity and membership growth from 1990 to 2004, a period in which an overall pattern of union decline continued and in which organizing achieved renewed prominence as both a union policy and public policy issue. Models for organizing activity and membership growth were proposed and tested. Union decentralization and employer opposition were found to be key predictors of organizing activity differences among unions. These same factors, along with organizing activity, helped explain union differences in membership growth, as did a “Sweeney era” effect.
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Notes
For 2001–2003 the average number of “RC” elections (union- or employee-initiated certification elections) was about 2550, and for 2008–2010 it was about 1507 (U.S. National Labor Relations Board 2012).
Authors’ tallies; details are available on request.
Union acronyms are detailed in Table 1 below.
The National Labor Relations Act still provides important protections to individuals undertaking concerted activity and to unions recognized despite many criticisms of the Act’s provisions and NLRB actions. This appears to be the obvious reason that NLRB-related organizing remains dominant (e.g., Martin 2008) despite strident assertions to the contrary that rely heavily on anecdotal evidence.
Lane Kirkland was AFL-CIO President for roughly 15 years ending with his resignation and succession by Tom Donahue just prior to Sweeney’s election in 1995. Our “Kirkland era” is the last 6 years of the Kirkland-Donahue reign. Our “Sweeney era” is the 6 years ending with 2004. The interim 1996–98 period may reflect transitional influences and is assigned to neither era.
Several early efforts to model aggregate U.S. membership growth and decline are described in Stepina and Fiorito (1986).
Of course, creating an organizing department at the Federation is not the same as national unions committing resources to increase organizing within their unions and locals.
Data for 1996–98, which might be considered “transitional,” were discarded for these tallies.
It should be noted that compatibility between the CATS and CHIPS ULP data is problematic, particularly with regard to union identification needed for this study. The older CHIPS data included three-digit numeric codes for each national union. The newer CATS data included union names in text. (There are an incredible number of ways to mistype some of the words in union names, but those entering the data found many of them, often). Hundreds of thousands of NLRB records were reviewed and edited electronically (i.e., mass-edited to the extent possible) for consistency prior to tallying the data, a process that consumed several weeks.
Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) for some composite measures used here is relatively low. Although effects of unreliability in multivariate estimation are not always clear, at least in bivariate relations low reliability tends to attenuate estimates and hence bias results toward insignificance.
The calculated F-value of the equation for Elections Per Member of 1.89 would be significant at the p < 0.20 level.
These unions are the CWA, SEIU, HERE, UFCW, UAW, IBT, and USA. Four of these were cited by a referee in her/his comment. See Table 1 for union acronyms.
Table 3’s samples and estimates are not affected because the union characteristics were not used in the first differences equations. Union dummy variables would necessarily drop out of these equations.
Those not identified by Martin (2008) as noted for aggressive and innovative organizing. See Note 11.
Recall that the Employment Growth variable may be “explaining” membership change variance because it captures membership declines for unions in shrinking industries as much as it captures expansion in growing industries.
There were no major statutory changes in the 1990–2004 period examined here, and the sub-periods (Kirkland and Sweeney eras) both involved “mixed” NLRB appointments (by presidents of both parties). As Tope and Jacobs (2009) found, NLRB composition changes over longer time periods appear to affect aggregate organizing activity.
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Parts of this work were presented previously at the European Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association in Manchester, England in 2007, at the Labor and Employment Relations Association in New Orleans in 2008, and at the British Universities Industrial Relations Association in Bristol, England in 2008. Court Gifford of the Bureau of National Affairs and various staff members at the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board provided assistance in obtaining data. Vickie Coleman Gallagher and M. Todd Royle provided research assistance at early stages in this project. Dave Macpherson provided data from the Current Population Survey. Gary Fournier provided helpful comments on selected estimation issues. These contributions are appreciated. Any errors are solely the responsibility of the authors.
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Fiorito, J., Jarley, P. Union Organizing and Membership Growth: Why Don’t They Organize?. J Labor Res 33, 461–486 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-012-9144-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12122-012-9144-y