Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner Recent documents in Kate Bronfenbrenner en-us Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:19:13 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/39 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/39 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:19:18 PDT [Excerpt] This chapter examines the impact of corporate restructuring and global outsourcing on employment in the Commonwealth and the shifts in production from workplaces in Massachusetts to other countries. In particular we focus on global outsourcing, the shifting of work from Massachusetts offshore to countries in Europe and Asia, and nearshore to Canada and countries in Latin America. Given the huge media attention that outsourcing and nearshoring have garnered, and the increasing trend they represent toward corporate restructuring and capital mobility with lasting repercussions for workers, families, unions, and communities in the Commonwealth, it is important to assess their relative impact on job loss in the state. Stephanie Luce http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/38 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/38 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:11:27 PDT [Excerpt] That labor is in a crisis cannot be questioned. While there may be some labor leaders who are content to keep ministering to an ever less powerful, shrinking base, there were few in the room that day that would disagree with the words expressed by SEIU International Executive Vice President Gerry Hudson on the opening panel, that the U.S. "labor movement is becoming dangerously close to being too small to matter." For the first time in decades, both organizing activity and union membership numbers have dropped precipitously. Where in past years unions had to organize 500,000 new workers just to keep union density stable, this year unions may have to organize as many as 800,000 new workers just to stand still. And they will not even come close. In fact, after a year when unions shifted enormous resources away from organizing towards electoral politics, it is likely that we will see the lowest organizing gains we have seen in more than two decades, possibly fewer than 200,000 new workers overall. Worse yet, this has occurred at a time when we are faced with the most labor unfriendly political and legal climate that we have seen in nearly a century. As Bill Fletcher noted in his opening remarks at the conference, this is indeed "the winter of our discontent." Kate Bronfenbrenner http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/36 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/36 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:11:12 PDT [Excerpt] After two decades of massive employment losses in heavily unionized sectors of the economy and exponential growth of the largely unorganized service sector, the U.S. labor movement is struggling to remain relevant. Despite new organizing initiatives and practices, union organizing today remains a tremendously arduous endeavor, particularly in the private sector, as workers and their unions are routinely confronted with an arsenal of aggressive legal and illegal antiunion employer tactics. This vigorous opposition to unions in the private sector does not stop once an election is won, but continues throughout bargaining for an initial union agreement, all too often turning organizing victories into devastating first-contract defeats. Despite these overwhelming obstacles, workers still organize and win--through certification elections and voluntary recognition campaigns in both the private and public sectors. And each year unions successfully negotiate thousands of first contracts in the United States, providing union representation for the first time to hundreds of thousands of new workers. This research takes an in-depth look at what unions achieve in these initial union contracts. Why, when confronted with such powerful opposition, do unorganized workers continue to want to belong to unions and newly organized workers want to stay union? What do these first contracts provide that makes the struggle worthwhile? To explore these questions, we analyze and evaluate union first contracts along four primary dimensions. First, we inventory the basic workers' rights provided by these contracts, which go beyond the very limited rights provided by federal and state labor law under the "employment at will" system. Second, we evaluate how first contracts provide workers and their unions with the institutional power to shape work and the labor process on a day-to-day basis. Third, we explore how first contracts codify the presence and power of unions in daily work life, and we evaluate which institutional arrangements provide a meaningful role for workers and their unions in their workplaces. Fourth, we examine the kinds of workplace benefits that are codified and supplemented in first contracts, gaining important insights into the types of human resource practices that exist in newly unionized workplaces. Finally, by examining the interactions among these four dimensions, we explore the limitations of what first contracts have been able to achieve in the current organizing environment, and what it would take for unions to improve the quality of first contracts. Tom Juravich http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/37 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/37 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:10:37 PDT Excerpt] There is no question that some unions, such as the UAW in auto-transplants and auto-parts, CWA/IUE in high tech and electronics, USWA in metal production and fabrication or the UFCW in food processing, face much greater challenges organising in their primary jurisdictions because they are confronted with more mobile, more global, and more powerful and effective employer opposition, and, in some cases, a workforce less predisposed to unionisation. Yet, as we have seen, even in the most adverse organising environments, union organising success can dramatically improve when unions utilise a comprehensive campaign strategy. Given these differences, what is perhaps most striking about our findings is how few unions are actually running comprehensive campaigns, or even consistently using any of the ten elements of our comprehensive campaign model. Most significant of all, only a smattering of unions today see themselves as global unions taking on global employers. They are not doing the strategic corporate research necessary to develop the kind of critique of the company needed to launch a truly multifaceted comprehensive campaign. They are not developing lasting labour and community networks, locally, nationally and internationally to help them build and leverage their power in the company and the industry. And they are not getting out in front on the issues that resonate with workers and the public ranging from universal health care, to the war in Iraq, global outsourcing, to affordable higher education. Kate Bronfenbrenner http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/35 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/35 Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:15:56 PDT Kate Bronfenbrenner http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/29 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/29 Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:28:55 PST [Excerpt] The free fall of union membership in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. private sector was checked by unionization in the public sector. In many ways the growth of public-sector employment both masked the dramatic decline of private-sector unionization and prevented the wholesale hemorrhaging of the labor movement. Although government workers comprise only 16 percent of the current workforce, workers covered by collective bargaining in the public sector currently make up approximately one-third of the membership of the AFL-CIO. Tom Juravich http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/28 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/28 Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:28:03 PST [Excerpt] The American labor movement is at a watershed. For the first time since the early years of industrial unionism sixty years ago, there is near-universal agreement among union leaders that the future of the movement depends on massive new organizing. In October 1995, John Sweeney, Richard Trumka, and Linda Chavez-Thompson were swept into the top offices of the AFL-CIO, following a campaign that promised organizing "at an unprecedented pace and scale." Since taking office, the new AFL-CIO leadership team has created a separate organizing department and has committed $20 million to support coordinated large-scale industry-based organizing drives. In addition, in the summer of 1996, the AFL-CIO launched the "Union Summer" program, which placed more than a thousand college students and young workers in organizing campaigns across the country. Kate Bronfenbrenner http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/27 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/27 Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:26:49 PST [Excerpt] Until recently, some national and local union leaders still argued that labor should circle the wagons and take care of existing members rather than spend scarce resources on organizing nonunion workers. Today those voices have largely been silenced by the hard numbers of labor's dramatic decline. As expressed in the platform of the new AFL-CIO leadership slate, the American labor movement must "organize at an unprecedented pace and scale." The question unions face today is no longer whether to make organizing a priority but how that can best be achieved. Kate Bronfenbrenner http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/26 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/26 Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:09:42 PST [Excerpt] In the last two decades, unions around the globe have watched in dismay as employers and governments have hastened to replicate US economic policies, labour laws, and union avoidance strategies. The result has been a race to the bottom for every aspect of the employment relationship -- whether safety and health, contract enforcement, job security, pension benefits, or the right to organize. Kate Bronfenbrenner http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/25 http://works.bepress.com/kate_bronfenbrenner/25 Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:29:25 PST Recent non-Board and public sector campaign victories include the 49,000 home child care providers who won recognition in Illinois, and 5,300 mostly immigrant janitors who won recognition in Houston, both through SEIU in 2005; 40,000 child care providers organized by AFSCME and the UAW in Michigan in 2006; and earlier this year, the 4,000 mostly African-American male security officers organized by SEIU in Los Angeles.7 The overwhelming majority of these new union members are workers of color, primarily women of color.\n We are not suggesting that unions stop devoting resources to workplaces where white men predominate (even if they do have the lowest win rates in NLRB elections, and represent the minority of those organized outside the board process). Kate Bronfenbrenner