Trade union community membership: exploring what people who are not in paid employment could contribute to union activism

The industrial relations literature tends to argue that workers join trade unions primarily for instrumental reasons, for example, to obtain assistance if there is a problem at work. But this clearly does not apply to people who are not in work. It is in many ways counterintuitive to join a trade union when one is not an employee or in paid employment, looking for a job, or retired. Generally, there is little material benefit in doing so. Others have noted, however, that personal values, particularly associated with the ideological left, can cultivate a predisposition toward joining a union that is not based on a purely material calculus. Nevertheless, this analysis is usually applied to workers. The research reflected in this article aims to understand the motivation of people who are not in paid employment, such as jobseekers/unemployed, students and retirees, to join labour unions and become active within them. It does so through a case study of the United Kingdom’s largest private sector union, Unite, and considers the contribution to, or rationale for, union activism within community membership and the possibilities for rethinking trade unionism beyond its traditional workplace base.

Union Threat Effects and the Decline in Employer-Provided Health Insurance

Employer-provided health insurance decreased by an average of almost 0.6 percentage points per year for adults aged 18 to 64 who were working full-time in the private sector between 1983 and 2007. Most of this decline was among non-union workers. This study reports estimates that suggest the decrease was caused by a decline employers faced in the threat of being unionized, as measured by the drop in state-level private-sector union density over the 25 years and across the 50 states. The author hypothesizes the decline in union density caused some non-union employers to decide not to offer health insurance. The study shows the importance of accounting for measurement error in union density when estimating the declining threat effect of unionization on non-union employer-provided health insurance coverage.

Introduction

This introductory chapter is about how historians have overlooked a wave of private-sector union organizing efforts in the 1970s. These efforts were led by the women and people of color who had gained new access to the nation’s best jobs following the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and who transformed the U.S. working class. This book uses National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election records to show that an average of half a million workers a year went through NLRB elections in the 1970s. The fact that workers increasingly lost those elections due to weak labor law fed the nation’s new economic divide.

The Changing Face of Unions and White Labor Support for the Democratic Party

This manuscript examines the political behavior of White union members, with a focus on the differences between private sector and public sector union members. In the last several decades, private sector union membership has drastically declined, but public sector union membership has greatly increased. This has transformed the White unionized workforce from a group composed primarily of non-professional men with no college education to one that is much more female, college educated, and professional. We test the proposition that White public sector union members have greater incentives to support the Democratic Party than their private sector counterparts. The method employed is an examination of the presidential vote among both unionized and non-unionized Whites during the 1950s and the 2000s, using data from the American National Election Studies. Support among unionized Whites for Democratic presidential candidates in the 2000s came primarily from college educated and professional White union members, which represents a reversal of the pattern found during the 1950s. These results provide evidence that the White union members currently voting for Democratic candidates belong mainly to public sector unions.

Labor's Enduring Divide: The Distinct Path of Public Sector Unions in the United States

Why did public sector unionization rise so dramatically and then plateau at the same time as private sector unionization underwent a precipitous decline? The exclusion of public sector employees from the centerpiece of private sector labor law—the 1935 Wagner Act—divided U.S. labor law and relegated public sector demand-making to the states. Consequently, public sector employees' collective bargaining rights were slow to develop and remain geographically concentrated, unequal and vulnerable. Further, divided labor law put the two movements out of alignment; private sector union density peaked nearly a decade before the first major statutes granting public sector collective bargaining rights passed. As a result of this incongruent timing and sequencing, the United States has never had a strong union movement comprised of both sectors at the height of their membership and influence.

Valuing Non-Wage Compensation of Private Sector Labor Union Workers in the Construction Trades

This article presents procedures for calculating the value of non-wage compensation for members of private sector labor unions in the construction industry and cites examples using various collective bargaining agreements. Four major fringe benefit categories are analyzed: welfare, annuity, vacation, and pension funds. When calculating the loss to a private sector union worker it is necessary to obtain not only the relevant collective bargaining agreements but also information regarding both actual earnings and the number of hours worked. If both cannot be obtained, problems in valuing retirement and other fringe benefit funds arise. In some cases, the union member may work for several different employers during any given year, thus receiving many W-2s, but all hours worked would be recorded through the union. To value employer contributions to annuity and vacation funds a determination needs to be made if the contributions take into account premium pay union workers may receive. To value lost medical insurance, the replacement cost of a comparable medical insurance policy should be used. For lost pension benefits, it is important to establish the typical number of hours per annum that would most likely have been worked but for the injury. In addition, if the history of that union's pension benefit reveals increases over time, then that pattern may need to be considered as a basis for determining the future value of the pension benefit. Valuation of each private sector union benefit, therefore, is not simply a matter of referring to the value of the hourly contribution by the employer but requires its own method appropriate to the nature of the benefit as specified in the union's collective bargaining agreement.

Does fighting back still matter? The Canadian autoworkers, capitalist crisis and confrontation

This article examines the round of collective bargaining that took place between the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW), Canada’s largest private-sector union, and the ‘Big Three’ auto manufacturers (Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors) during the most recent crisis of capitalism (sometimes popularly referred to as the ‘Great Recession’). During this round of bargaining, the union made concessions in order to secure production; the article argues what while this may have represented a short-term success, in the long run the union has implicitly bought into the logics of neoliberalism, which will have disastrous consequences for both the union and the larger labour movement.

The Effects Of Unions On Wages By Occupation In The Public Sector

This study examines union wage premiums by occupation in the public sector in the U.S. for the 2000-2004 period. In examining union-nonunion wage differences for public sector workers in occupations accounting for 66 percent of all public workers in the 2000-2004 Current Population Survey, we find positive and statistically significant union premiums for 27 out of 41 occupations examined. We also find large differences among occupations, with miscellaneous teachers and instructors receiving a 61 percent premium, secretaries and administrative assistants receiving a 5 percent premium, and 14 occupations receiving no statistically significant premium. In comparing union premiums by occupation between the private and public sectors, we find, in most cases, that private sector premiums are larger than public sector premiums. Finally, an Oaxaca decomposition shows that the majority of the differential between private sector union premiums and public sector union premiums appears to be due to differences in the way unions reward workers in the private and public sectors, not because of differences in the types of workers in the private and public sectors.