Revisiting Union Decline: What Caused Organized Labor's Crisis?

• In Event: 036 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Worker and Union Strategies and Structures: The United State in an International Context

Abstract

I explore the sources of union decline, inspecting the shifting prominence of different causes at different points in time. Using a relational approach which views labor and capital as actors that gain or lose power at the expense of each other, I find that U.S. union decline is the result of a chain of contingent institutional transformations that benefitted capital relative to labor. Capital was advantaged and labor was disadvantaged due to: 1) the consistent failure of unions to sufficiently organize new members, 2) the reconfiguration of productive capital in the 1970s and 1980s, and 3) weakening protections of labor policy by the 1970s. Combined, this confluence of factors enabled a business political mobilization and offensive, leading to a steep decline in union membership in the early 1980s. Results highlight the complex nature of temporal dynamics in capital-labor power struggles.

Author

• Nathan Meyers, University of Massachusetts Amherst