Kate Bronfenbrenner

Introduction to Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:38:31 PST

[Excerpt] The chapters in this book make clear that unions have the capability to build the cross-border coalitions necessary to take on transnational corporations. The question is whether they are willing to make the fundamental ideological and cultural changes necessary to make this happen on a global scale. If they are, then maybe it will be five, not twenty years before Wal-Mart is no longer driving the global race to the bottom; before firms such as Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, Talisman, Caterpillar, and any number of large pharmaceutical companies will no longer be able to profess to be good corporate citizens in some countries and operate entirely outside the law in others. All of us who put so much work into the conference and into this volume did so because we believe that unions and their allies do have the capacity to change and become a global movement. But most important of all, we believe that with these changes, the balance of power, like the arc of history, will finally be tilting away from capital toward workers, their unions, and communities in both the Global North and Global South.

Conclusion to Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:38:27 PST

[Excerpt] What the cases in this book show is that the world's unions have a greater potential than most realize to take on the most powerful corporations and win. These cases also show how difficult that can be. It requires enormous effort, creativity, and a willingness to take risks and reach across differences. But going from individual cases to something bigger requires something else as well. As difficult as times are for workers in the Global North, and as much as the wealth accumulated by global capital comes mostly from taking enormous profits at the expense of all workers, part of the reason that capital is able to do what it does is that hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism have restrained workers' power, wages, and labor costs. This not only has made many a CEO and corporate shareholder very rich but has helped make a middle-class lifestyle affordable for millions and millions of workers in the Global North that would not have been possible otherwise.

Prepared Statement for the National Mediation Board

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:34:44 PDT

Testimony before the NMB hearings on the proposed rule change to the RLA that recommend changing the voting standard from the majority of eligible voters to the majority of votes cast. The testimony summarized findings from the first ever national academic study of organizing under the RLA. Based on findings that showed that under the RLA standard greater employer suppression is correlated with lower turnout while under the NLRB standard both the union and the employer work aggressively for high turn out, the author argued for changing the voting standard to majority of votes cast.

The Evolution of Strategic and Coordinated Bargaining Campaigns in the 1990s: The Steelworkers’ Experience

Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:16:38 PDT

"With the refocusing of attention of the labor movement on organizing, an increasing number of scholars have been directing their research toward the nature and practice of current union organizing efforts. These scholars have begun updating a literature that had grown sorely out of touch with the organizing experience of America’s unions and have provided the foundation for a more sophisticated understanding of the organizing process. While we applaud this resurgence in organizing research, there has not been a comparable resurgence in research on collective bargaining…"

Offshoring: The Evolving Profile of Corporate Global Restructuring

Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:16:37 PDT

For all of the increase in international trade and rising concern about shifting of manufacturing and service jobs away from the United States, there is remarkably little detailed data on the scope of outsourcing. In part that reflects corporation's reluctance to announce plans to shift production or office work overseas. Even more, it is a consequence of the U.S. government's failure to collect data on the phenomenon.

This article reports on the results of a study intended to fill this information gap. Our research involves a combination of online media tracking and corporate research and the creation of a database including information on all production shifts announced or confirmed in the media during a specified period. The study examines production shifts from January 1 through March 31, 2004.

Raw Power: Plant-Closing Threats and the Threat to Union Organizing

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:16:37 PDT

Today, in the post-NAFTA climate of expanding trade agreements and skyrocketing levels of corporate migration, a majority of employers continue to make plant-closing threats during organizing campaigns. A recent study found that plant-closing threats continue to be among the most powerful anti-union strategies, and threats are even more pervasive than they were in 1993-95.

Introduction: Bringing the Study of Work Back to Labor Studies

Tom Juravich et al. — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:16:36 PDT

No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:59:45 PDT

This study provides a comprehensive independent anlaysis fo employer behavior in union representation elections supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Using survey data as well as actual NLRB documents from a random sample of 2000 NLRB election campaigns which took place between 1999-2003 Bronfenbrenner finds it is standard practice for workers to be subjected by corporations to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance and retaliation for union activity.

Even when workers succeeded in forming a union, 52 percent are still without a contract a year after the election and 37 percent two years later. The failure of the current syste to defend workers' rights in a timely manner multiplies the obstacles workers face when seeking representation adding further delays that favor employers over workers. Bronfenbrenner finds that employers appeal a high percentage of the cases and in the most egregious cases the employee can count on the final decision being delayed by three to five years, with the heaviest penalty likely to be back pay minus the workers wages.

Capital Mobility and Job Loss: Corporate Restructuring, Production Shifts, and Outsourcing

Stephanie Luce et al. — 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.

What is Labor’s True Purpose? The Implications of SEIU’s Unite to Win Proposals for Organizing

Kate Bronfenbrenner — 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."

Significant Victories: An Analysis of Union First Contracts

Tom Juravich et al. — 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.

The U.S. Experience of Organising in the Context of the Global Economy

Kate Bronfenbrenner — 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.

Preparing for the Worst: Organizing and Staying Organized in the Public Sector

Tom Juravich et al. — 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.

Organizing to Win: Introduction

Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. — 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.

It Takes More Than House Calls: Organizing to Win with a Comprehensive Union-Building Strategy

Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. — 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.

The American Labour Movement and the Resurgence in Union Organizing

Kate Bronfenbrenner — 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.

Race, gender, and the rebirth of trade unionism

Kate Bronfenbrenner et al. — 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).

Reversing the tide of organizing decline: Lessons from the US Experience

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:25:56 PST

As increasing numbers of employers and governments in industrialized nations hasten to Americanize their economic policies, labor laws, and union-avoidance strategies, it has become critical for unions in other countries to learn what they can from the organizing experience of the US labor movement. US unions, however, have greatly contributed to their own decline by having failed to aggressively organize when they had the power and opportunity in the 1950s and the 1960s, and then continuing to fail to commit the resources in the 1970s and 1980s. The author's research over the last 10 years has shown that unions can significantly improve their organizing success, even in the most hostile organizing climate, when they rely on a comprehensive union building strategy. These findings have important implications, not just for the US labor movement, but for unions in other nations as well, as they struggle to regain lost membership and power.

Declining Unionization, Rising Inequality: an Interview with Kate Bronfenbrenner

Kate Bronfenbrenner — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:13:27 PST

Kate Bronfenbrenner is director of labor education research at the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. She worked for many years as an organizer with the United Woodcutters Association in Mississippi and the Service Employees International Union in Boston. She is the author, co-author and editor of numerous books and articles on union strategies.

Global Unions: Challenging Transnational Capital Through Cross-Border Campaigns

Kate Bronfenbrenner, Editor — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:13:23 PST

To meet the challenges of globalization, unions must improve their understanding of the changing nature of corporate ownership structures and practices, and they must develop alliances and strategies appropriate to the new environment. Global Unions includes original research from scholars around the world on the range of innovative strategies that unions use to adapt to different circumstances, industries, countries, and corporations in taking on the challenge of mounting cross-border campaigns against global firms. This collection emerges from a landmark conference where unionists, academics, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations from the Global South and the Global North met to devise strategies for labor to use when confronting the most powerful corporations such as Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil.

The workplaces discussed here include agriculture (bananas), maritime labor (dock workers), manufacturing (apparel, automobiles, medical supplies), food processing, and services (school bus drivers). Kate Bronfenbrenner's introduction sets the stage, followed by contributions describing specific examples from Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Bronfenbrenner's conclusion focuses on the key lessons for strengthening union power in relation to global capital.