What unions no longer do / Jake Rosenfeld.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenfeld, Jake, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Labor movement--United States.

Labor movement.

Income distribution--United States.

Income distribution.

Labor unions--Political activity--United States.

Labor unions.

Minorities--United States--Social conditions.

Minorities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From workers' wages to presidential elections, labor unions once exerted tremendous clout in American life. In the immediate post-World War II era, one in three workers belonged to a union. The fraction now is close to one in five, and just one in ten in the private sector. The only thing big about Big Labor today is the scope of its problems. While many studies have explained the causes of this decline, What Unions No Longer Do shows the broad repercussions of labor's collapse for the American economy and polity. Organized labor was not just a minor player during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Jake Rosenfeld asserts. For generations it was the core institution fighting for economic and political equality in the United States. Unions leveraged their bargaining power to deliver benefits to workers while shaping cultural understandings of fairness in the workplace. What Unions No Longer Do details the consequences of labor's decline, including poorer working conditions, less economic assimilation for immigrants, and wage stagnation among African-Americans. In short, unions are no longer instrumental in combating inequality in our economy and our politics, resulting in a sharp decline in the prospects of American workers and their families.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction

1 The Collapse of Organized Labor in the United States

2 Government Is Not the Answer

3 Wages and Inequality

4 Strikes

5 The Timing Was Terrible

6 Justice for Janitors?

7 The Ballot Box

8 The Past as Prologue

Appendix

Notes

References

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674727267

0674727266

9780674726215

0674726219

OCLC:

871257256