scholarly journals Organized Labor and Racial Wage Inequality in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 117 (5) ◽  
pp. 1460-1502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake Rosenfeld ◽  
Meredith Kleykamp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jarod Roll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Labor History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Non Union

The metal miners of the Tri-State district (Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma) opposed social democratic unions and government regulation for nearly a century. Historians of organized labor in the United States have neglected workers like these, opting instead to focus on workers who joined unions. This introduction outlines how this study of the non-union and anti-union miners of the Tri-State district changes the field of labor history. The story of the Tri-State miners shows how some American workers rejected the protections of working-class solidarity because they inherited and embraced a faith in capitalism, white supremacy, and aggressive masculinity.

scholarly journals Automation, Occupational Earnings Trends, and the Moderating Role of Organized Labor

Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zachary Parolin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Earnings Growth ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Union Coverage ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Earnings Trends ◽  
The Cost

Abstract Routine-biased technological change has emerged as the dominant explanation for the differential earnings growth of occupations at greater risk of automation, such as machine operators or office clerks, relative to less routine occupations. In contrast, this paper finds that the declining earnings returns to an occupation’s routine task intensity (RTI) can largely be attributed to the decline of organized labor. Using individual-level data on 3.3 million employed adults across the United States from 1983 to 2017, this paper finds that organized labor has two countervailing effects on occupations at greater risk of automation. First, higher union coverage within a state and industry inhibits the decline in earnings returns to an occupation’s RTI. Second, higher union coverage hastens the decline in employment shares of occupations with higher RTI. The result is that occupations at greater risk of automation experience more favorable earnings growth where unions are more resilient, but at the cost of accelerated declines in their employment shares. Counterfactual analyses demonstrate that if union coverage in the United States had remained stable at 1983 levels, the earnings returns to an occupation’s RTI might not have declined from 1983 to 2017, and the observed pattern of occupational earnings polarization in the 1990s might not have occurred. However, the mean RTI of occupations might have declined by an additional 21 percent from 1983 to 2017 relative to the observed decline. The findings suggest that the social consequences of automation are conditional on the strength of organized labor.

Monopoly Capital, Organized Labor, and Military Expenditures in the United States, 1949-1976

1982 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. S113-S153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry J. Griffin ◽  
Joel A. Devine ◽  
Michael Wallace
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Military Expenditures

Organized Labor and the Invention of Modern Liberalism in the United States

1987 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 317-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Orren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
American Strain ◽  
Comparative Treatment ◽  
American Labor Movement ◽  
American Labor

There is perhaps no political topic that has been given such relentlessly comparative treatment as the American labor movement. It is rare to read any comprehensive political or historical study of organized labor that is not cast, implicitly or explicitly, against the greater class consciousness of European counterparts. The explanations advanced for the uniqueness or the lack of vigor in the American strain—abundance of land, immigration, early suffrage, a revolutionary heritage of “republicanism”—constitute most of what exists in the way of theories about American labor politics.

Hispanics and Organized Labor in the United States, 1973 to 2007

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (6) ◽  
pp. 916-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jake Rosenfeld ◽  
Meredith Kleykamp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor

Varieties of Capitalist Interests: Power, Institutions, and the Regulatory Welfare State in the United States and Sweden

2004 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Swenson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Industrial Societies

Current wisdom about the American welfare state's laggard status among advanced industrial societies, by attributing it to the weakness of the Left and organized labor, poses a historical puzzle. In the 1930s, the United States experienced a dramatically progressive turn in social policy-making. New Deal Democrats, dependent on financing from capitalists, passed landmark social insurance reforms without backing from a well-organized and electorally successful labor movement like those in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Sweden, by contrast, with the world's strongest Social Democratic labor movement, did not pass important social insurance legislation until the following two decades.

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