Significant Victories: The Practice and Promise of First Contracts in the Public and Private Sectors

Tom Juravich, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University
Robert Hickey, Cornell University

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Suggested Citation
Bronfenbrenner, K. (2002, October). Significant victories: The practice and promise of first contracts in the public and private sectors [Electronic version]. Paper presented at the AFL-CIO/Michigan State University Conference on Worker Rights, Lansing, MI.
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/reports/2/

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Abstract

After decades of massive employment losses in heavily unionized sectors of the economy, and the exponential growth of the largely unorganized service sector, the American labor movement is struggling to remain relevant. Despite new organizing initiatives, the combination of US labor law and labor relations practices have made new organizing a tremendously arduous endeavor. Private sector workers, in particular, are routinely confronted with a host of aggressive legal, marginally legal, and illegal anti-union tactics from employers and their representatives.

Final paper published as Juravich, T., Bronfenbrenner, K., & Hickey, R. (2006). Significant victories. In R. N. Block, S. Friedman, M. Kaminski, & A. Levin (Eds.), Perspectives on the erosion of collective bargaining in the United States. Kalamazoo: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.