Unions and Communities under Siege: American Communities and the Crisis of Organized Labor

by Gordon L. Clark

Overview

The essential argument of this book is that the current crisis facing American unions has to be considered in terms of the immediate communal context of labor-management relations. The structure of New Deal national labor legislation has sustained and maintained distinctive local labor-management practices. In response to the ever-increasing economic interdependence of American and external communities, unions have found it difficult to achieve similar scales of integration, and their fragile ideal of intercommunity solidarity has often been overwhelmed by economic imperatives operating at higher levels and in other places. Three particular themes recur throughout Professor Clark's study: the role of the community in labor-management relations, the roles of state and federal institutions in adjudicating local industrial disputes, and the significance of economic restructuring for the roles and future of industrial unions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521365161
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/13/1989
Series:	Cambridge Human Geography
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.14(d)

Table of Contents

List of tables; Preface; Acknowledgments; Part I. Economy and Community: 1. Crisis of organized labor; 2. Understanding union growth and decline; Part II. Drama of Economic Restructuring: 3. Communities and corporate location strategies; 4. Rationing jobs within the union, between communities; Part III. Union Performance in Representation Elections: 5. Democracy in the guise of representation elections; 6. Organizing strategies in the heartland and the South; 7. At the margin of the rules of the game; Part IV. Regulating Local Labor-Management Relations: 8. Integrity of the National Labor Relations Board; 9. Options for restructuring the US economy; Part V. Prospects For Organized Labor: 10. Republicans, democrats, and the southern veto; 11. Employment contracts without unions; 12. Unions and communities unarmed; Appendices; Notes; Bibliography; Indexes.