On 19 June 1935, the Committee on Rules debated House Resolution 263 – a resolution to report the Wagner Act to the floor of Congress for final approval. In that debate House members sought to clarify and defend provisions of the Act. While doing so Representative Mead (D – New York) said, in part, that the Act “creates a democracy within industry which gives our industrial workers the same general idea of freedom which the founding fathers conferred upon citizens of the United States. It prohibits force and intimidation and leaves men to organize or remain unorganized as they shall desire.” At the time, Representative Mead's interpretation of the Act, electoral democracy for industry, was one amongst a number of competing and complementary interpretations. Since passage of the Taft–Hartley amendments in 1947 it is now assumed that this interpretation was central to the Act. Indeed, Stone (1981) suggested that as representation elections mimic partisan political elections, the Act embodies a fundamental ideal of American liberalism: local electoral choice.

President Roosevelt noted in signing the Wagner Act into law that it “[establishes] the right of self-organization of employees in industry for the purpose of collective bargaining, and provides methods by which the government can safeguard that legal right.” The National Labor Relations Board was the federal agency charged with the responsibility of holding representation elections and adjudicating appeals over conduct of the electoral process. These elections are the life-blood of any union.

The 1980s brought considerable hardship to many people and their communities. Podgursky's (1987) study of post-1980 worker displacement for the National Academy of Sciences' panel on technology and employment (see Cyert and Mowery 1987) indicated that of the many millions of industrial workers who lost jobs in recent years few were lucky enough to find similar jobs. Displaced workers have suffered under-employment and unemployment with incomes (wages and benefits) much below previous levels. Employment in other expanding sectors (predominately service sectors), relocation, and higher levels of household labor market participation (typical blue-collar adjustment strategies) have rarely made up the difference. Indeed, some commentators argue that economic restructuring has substantially reduced the number of well-paid manual jobs and has further polarized the distribution of wages and salaries (Bluestone and Harrison 1987; Harrison and Bluestone 1987).

If economic restructuring were randomly distributed across the United States, it is doubtful its effects would have much political significance. However, economic restructuring is inherently geographically differentiated, most recently concentrated in American factory towns and cities whose histories are intimately linked to the evolution of whole industries, firms, and plants. In these communities, plant closings and worker displacement are economic and political disasters. Plant closings often mean economic desolation, massive unemployment, and the collapse of other related businesses.

Economic restructuring can also be an intense political drama, involving state and local governments, community organizations, corporations, and unions.

How might patterns noted in the previous chapter be explained? What theoretical perspectives are available for interpreting the decline of American unions? There is a massive literature on American unions, and the unionization process. The focus of this chapter is reserved for economic-oriented and geographical models of American unions. Two related issues are addressed: one concerns how we ought to understand the growth and decline of unions over time and place. The other concerns how we ought to conceptualize unions as organizations. In conclusion, comments are made about the methodological bases of analyses presented in subsequent parts of the book.

The literature on unions extends over a long period of time and has seen many different frameworks come and go. Not surprisingly, there have been numerous attempts to review and systematize this literature, providing a steady stream of innovative modes of understanding the unionization process. Yet, for all this research, there is a great deal of pessimism about the utility of recent research. Fiorito and Greer (1982:19) observed that “[a]t present, there is no satisfactory model of union growth [or decline].” This sentiment is echoed by Hirsch and Addison (1986:72), who commented about a popular technique of analysis that “time series studies available to date tell us very little [about the current crisis of American unions].”

It appears that many researchers are uncomfortable with the hetero-geneity of union experience, and would prefer an integrative framework which would eschew diversity for a standard model applicable to an average situation.

The essential argument of this book is that the current crisis of organized labor ought to be considered in terms of the local context of labor-management relations; that is, the communities in which men and women live and work. This argument, and the overall logic of the book, are premised upon two suppositions. First, whether by design or necessity, the structure of New Deal national labor legislation has sustained and maintained distinctive local labor-management practices. Second, as the economies of American communities (and the world) have become highly interdependent, reflecting the evolution of corporate structure and trade between economies, unions have found it difficult achieving a similar scale of integration. Indeed, the crisis of the union movement can be traced, in part, to unions' dependence upon inter-community solidarity, a fragile democratic ideal which is often overwhelmed by economic imperatives operating at higher scales in other places.

In evaluating others' analytical frameworks which have been used to study the recent performance of American labor unions, I have been surprised at the neglect or disinterest shown by scholars of the intersection between unions and communities. Too often, the diversity of local experience is rationalized in terms of a supposedly all-embracing national labor-management relations system, despite bitter disputes between labor and management which seem to have the community as an essential ingredient. And, too often, it is imagined that unions are just like corporations; national and international institutions, structured as hierarchical top-down command organizations reflecting the imperatives of the market.

In a recent decision, a panel of the National Labor Relations Board set aside a narrow union victory in a representation election involving the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Local 1034 and the Bristol Textile Company. During an acrimonious election campaign two employees were overheard saying that they would slash the tires of employees who opposed the union. The union won the election by a 15–12 vote, with two ballots challenged. The company filed an objection with the NLRB claiming that the threat to slash tires so affected the atmosphere of the election that a second election was warranted. On appeal, the NLRB panel held that the threat was “plainly coercive.” Because of the closeness of the margin of victory, and the fact that at least seven voters were aware of the threat before the election, the panel ordered a new election.

In another case, this time involving the United Food and Commercial Workers and a supermarket chain, the Board ordered a new election because a management consultant “unlawfully interrogated” employees about their prior union experience just before the election. In this instance, the union lost by a vote of 27–51 and appealed to the Board claiming (in part) that the management consultant's questions had a coercive affect on employees. Chairman Dotson dissented from the majority opinion, arguing that the interrogation was an isolated event, which would have had no effect on the outcome of the election.

From all the data so far presented, it is apparent that the American labor movement is in the grips of a profound crisis. Unions are winning proportionally fewer representation elections, contesting fewer elections, and winning in smaller units. These patterns are especially evident in the electoral performance of industrial production-oriented unions in the northern industrial states over the past ten years. Since the early 1950s, it has often been asserted that the union movement would inevitably decline because of its lack of appeal to the growing service-sector occupations and to the southern region of the US. And yet, some thirty years later, it seems that the union movement is most vulnerable in those sectors and areas once thought to be the heartland of American unionism.

In the previous chapter it was noted that there are distinct differences between unions in their organizing strategies. For example, the IBEW has concentrated on skilled tradesmen in a variety of electrical-oriented sectors located across the US. In contrast, the UAW has concentrated on a group of auto-related industries located in just a few regions. One goal of this chapter is to provide a rationale for this organized strategy. Most of the literature fails to integrate the macro-structural determinants of unionization with the local context of representation elections. The geographical diversity of representation elections, so obvious in election outcomes, seems too often lost in the rush to prove single equation (parsimonious) models of unionization.

The United States economy is undergoing a profound transformation. As we saw in the previous chapter, rapid penetration of the domestic US market by overseas producers and concomitant unanticipated reconfiguration of product markets have left many domestic producers significantly under-capitalized, and many sectors, industries, and firms in decline. These factors have drastically affected the livelihood of many thousands of workers and their communities. Corporate restructuring programs have begun rationing the remaining jobs amongst existing facilities on the basis of labor costs, labor productivity, and union cooperativeness. Some corporations like Mack Trucks have unilaterally instituted restructuring plans. But there are others which have deliberately involved their unions in the process of job rationing.

This chapter considers an instance of cooperative job rationing, and advances three related arguments. First, it is suggested that cooperative restructuring programs can pose fundamental threats to the internal political coherence of unions. Second, it is also suggested that because of the democratic imperatives faced by unions, community loyalties may fragment union solidarity. And third, cooperative restructuring programs threaten the very future of unions as institutions. The chapter is based on a case study involving United Auto Workers Local unions 12 (Toledo), 72 (Kenosha), and 75 (Milwaukee), the UAW International, and the American Motors Corporation (AMC) and its Jeep Division located in Toledo, Ohio. The dispute concerned the implementation of an Employee Investment Plan (EIP) and Preferential Hiring and Corporate Seniority (PHCS) program involving the three UAW Locals over the period 1978 to 1986.

In the first half of this decade, the United States economy went through a remarkable cycle of fortune. From the severest recession since the Great Depression, the national economy has prospered to the point where some believe that its success threatens the integrity of the whole economy. While the economy is not quite at full employment, domestic macroeconomic indicators appear robust when compared to European conditions. Even so, the economic recovery has been very uneven, sectorally and spatially. Restructuring and deindustrialization have accompanied the recovery so that even as the economy has added new jobs, other union jobs have been lost. The new jobs created are quite different, by skill, sector, union representation, and location, to the jobs lost. There appears to be a new economic geography, markedly different than the post-war era.

In terms of labor policy, there remain important issues to be considered in how restructuring should be designed and accommodated. One fundamental issue has to do with how local labor relations might be modified so that American industries, particularly heavy manufacturing industries, remain economically competitive in the face of foreign competition. This is not simply a question of economic efficiency, or of policy inventiveness. While many citizens, whether labor or management, Democratic or Republican, secular or nonsecular, desire economic success, there are just and unjust ways of ensuring future prosperity. Current policy options for redesigning local labor relations have significant equity dimensions which may be as important as their economic consequences.

In an era predicted by some to be the mature, growth-consolidation phase of industrial unionism (Lester 1958), the United States labor movement is fighting for its survival. Industrial labor unions, the traditional centers of union power in the economy and in the labor movement, are particularly threatened. Some of these unions have lost as much as 40 percent of their membership base over the last decade. Not only have they suffered from economic restructuring, but these unions are winning proportionally fewer and fewer representation elections, contesting fewer elections, and winning only in smaller and smaller electoral units. Internally and externally industrial unions are under siege.

One startling aspect of recent patterns of union decline is that the survival of industrial unions is under threat even in their home domain: northern industrial towns and cities. Diversification strategies like the United Auto Workers' southern strategy have become practically impossible to affect. Declining membership is the norm, and growth of membership a distant memory. In contrast, over the past decade service workers' unions seem to have been able to extend their representation of American workers, though even this trend has slowed in recent years. With structural changes in the economy, large-scale displacement of industrial employment, and a relatively poor performance of industrial unions in representation elections, the flow of members to the American labor movement has slowed to barely a trickle.

Any understanding of the interrelationships between organized labor and American communities must inevitably consider the role and status of the administrative arm of federal labor law, the National Labor Relations Board. It is the NLRB which is responsible for the administration and interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act. In addition, it is decisions of the Board which have had profound impacts on the economic health of American communities, the success and failure of organized labor in local representation elections, and the extent of managements' prerogatives in terms of the relocation of work, to cite just three of many related dimensions.

The current NLRB was a product of the Wagner Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 5 July 1935. Drawing upon the experience of immediate predecessors (the National Labor Board of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Board of 1934), sponsors of the new Board hoped that it would be a unifying but independent force for the administration of federal labor law (see First annual report of the NLRB 1935: ch. 3). In retrospect, achievements of the Act and the Board went well beyond supporters' goals and President Roosevelt's modest ambitions: “an important step toward the achievement of just and peaceful labor relations in industry.”