Cleavages, Social Sorting, and the U.S. Labor Movement

• In Event: Labor Politics, Class, and Inequality

Abstract

The U.S. labor movement has seen uneven success across sectors in the post-industrial era. While workers recently suffered landmark defeats in union elections in traditional sectors from car manufacturing to logistics, the labor movement showed explosive growth in parts of the service sector such as coffee shops and higher education. We argue that the combination of social sorting into parties and polarization in attitudes towards unions makes the demographic composition of workplaces an important explanation for variation in union success. First, analyses of ANES data from the 1960s to 2020 demonstrate that affect towards unions has become much more closely tied over time to partisanship, liberal-conservative ideology, and affect towards party-aligned social groups such as African Americans, Latinos, and feminists. Second, using aggregated data on occupations and NLRB election results, we test the hypothesis that elections in occupations attracting more educated, female, racially diverse, and LGBTQ+ workers are more likely to result in union victories. Finally, qualitative interviews with workers in workplaces with both successful and unsuccessful union drives explore the role of social and political identities as a mechanism linking the social composition of workplaces to election outcomes.

Authors

• Susan Lee Kang, CUNY- John Jay College

• David Attewell, University of Zurich