IST 605: Sociology of Labor

Fletcher conducts an ethnography on the Meridian Labor Council’s, a Central Labor Council (CLC), efforts to integrate themselves into the community in Metropolitan Central Appalachia. The author focuses on the Meridian Labor Council’s involvement with Labor Day events and the AFL-CIO sponsored member-to-member canvassing for the Kentucky 2007 gubernatorial election. When Fletcher returned to the Labor Council in 2013, the researcher found that the organization had lost momentum due to in-fighting amongst union locals. Although the Meridian Labor Council was not able to create long term community-labor alliances, this ethnography serves as a testament to the power of labor movements re-claiming public space as free space. Fletcher argues that small-scale activities are crucial to creating “free spaces” that perpetuate solidarity and political participation in a democratic fashion.

Voss and Sherman’s study explores the question: how can social movement organizations break out of the binds of bureaucratic conservatism? The authors interview union organizers and staff and also examine secondary data on tactics and campaigns. With local unions as their unit of analysis, the authors found that three main components were at play when overcoming oligarchy: localized political crisis leading to new leadership, leaders with activist experience outside of labor organizing, and the emergence of the international union’s powerful influence. The study implies the importance of new leaders with new interpretations, the importance of crisis in propelling real change and developing confrontational tactics, and the importance of international unions for transformation.

This article examines data on union rivalry and union density as a whole in the United States and the density of the AFL-CIO from the years 1900 to 2005. The authors strive to answer the question: do competing unions detract from labor’s resources and divide the allegiances of workers? The authors’ results indicate that rival unionism actually improves workers’ representation due to the increase of union density. In 2005, the newly formed Change to Win union that broke off from the AFL-CIO, advocated for consolidating unions, but the authors’ research could indicate that the maintenance of multiple rival unions may be a better strategy for increasing union density.

Llanes’s study explores TikTok as a tool for the labor movement. Llanes examines three different labor-related accounts on TikTok, including their themes and messages. The author found that the engagement levels of these accounts were higher than that of unions on more traditional platforms. Through these accounts, these unions educated and even had the potential to organize younger audiences. However, the author notes that these accounts were still underutilized and advocates for more collaboration between the accounts and their audiences for the best results. Additionally, more research is needed in order to understand if the successes of these accounts are replicable or sustainable.

Sociologist Jake Rosenfeld examines the ways in which labor unions have changed in the United States. The book delves into the difficult battles labor movements have had to fight against management throughout history in order to build an organized workforce. Rosenfeld explains that one major reason for labor union decline in the private sector in the United States is the decline in strikes. The author suggests that strike decline is unlikely to be representative of more efficient collective bargaining but rather it would seem to indicate that unions have lost leverage in collective bargaining power over the years.

This resource is a review of Sanford Jacoby’s book Labor in the Age of Finance: Pensions, Politics, and Corporations from Deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank, which explores the effect of the increase in shareholder value capitalism on labor unions since the 1980s. Fligstein relays that the majority of the book is focused on the ways in which unions have involved themselves in corporate governance in order to sustain their remaining power. Jacoby also discusses what unions have done to increase their economic and political influence. The book concludes with a discussion on where unions are now in the United States, and Jacoby argues that the largest victories can be seen with upstart unions such as the SEIU who employed direct action techniques.

Ness reviews the book Labor in the Time of Trump, which grapples with the U.S. labor movement and the stressors inflicted upon it by the Trump administration. The authors discuss the past two decades and the conservative agenda which ultimately led to Trump in the White House while also highlighting the role Democrats have played in privatization and its decline in support for the labor movement over the past 50 years. In order to combat neoliberal capitalism, the scholars argue, coalitions must be built between progressive movements and working class Americans. Ness argues that the book is in need of more detail on how the Trump administration specifically has weakened the labor movement in the United States.