Union Booms and Busts: The Ongoing Fight Over the U.S. Labor Movement

"Forming and defending unions in the United States has always been a Herculean task. Employers have a long history of fighting vigorously to bust strikes and prevent workers from organizing- and, ultimately to dis-organize unions. The government, including politicians, local officials, and the courts, has provided unions only sporadic support-and sometimes it directly opposed them. This challenging terrain for unions characterizes labor relations in the 2000s, just as it did in early 1900s. And yet, throughout the last century, large numbers of workers successfully formed unions, with national trends in union strength developing a wave-like pattern. In the early 1900s, about one in ten workers were unionized; by mid-century, that number had risen to one in three. But by 2015, union density resembled the circumstances from a century earlier, with approximately one in ten workers unionized".
Union Booms and Busts takes a bird's eye view of the shifting fortunes of U.S. workers and their unions on the one hand, and employers and their organizations on the other. Using detailed data, this book analyses union density across 11 industries and 115 years, contrasting the organizing and union building successes and failures across decades. With attention to historical developments and the economic, political, and legal contexts of each period, it highlights workers' and their unions' actions, including strikes, union elections, and organizing strategies as well those of employers, who aimed to disrupt union organizing using legal maneuvers, workforce-based strategies, and race and gender divisions. By demonstrating how workers used strikes, elections, and other strategies to win power and employers used legal maneuvers, workforce-based strategies, and race and gender divisions to disrupt unions, the authors reveal data-driven truths about the ongoing history ofunionization.Chapters follow time periods: the early unregulated period where unions took hold in only a handful of industries; the mid-century regulated period where strikes, elections, and union density grew across industries; and the later dis-regulated period where union trajectories diverged, with some industries seeing drastic decline and others holding steady. The book concludes by turning toward what might come next for workers and unions in America and provides access to on-line data for readers who want to take a closer look.