Moving beyond the critical synthesis: does the law preclude a future for US unions?

Abstract

This retrospective essay on Tomlins' The State and Unions assesses the durability of his observations in light of developments over the past quarter century. The decline of unions in the context of minimal protections offered under contemporary labor law seems to fit Tomlins' thesis that the New Deal offered only a counterfeit liberty to labor. A brief review of failed efforts at union revitalization demonstrates that labor's waning fortunes are as much a sign of institutional rigidity and internal weakness as result of external constraints. Any current semblance of liberty offered to the U.S. working class is indeed counterfeit, but the source of fraud is the full set of neoliberal economic policies, not the narrow constraints of labor law alone.

Notes

^1. See for example this author's modest contribution published a decade earlier, Hurd, “New Deal Labor Policy.”

^2. Dubofsky, “Review of The State and the Unions.”

^3. Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board; The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board; Broken Promises.

^4. Becker, “Individual Rights and Collective Action,” 684.

^5. AFL-CIO, The Changing Station of Workers and Their Unions, 23–4, 27–9.

^6. AFL-CIO, Numbers That Count: a Manual on Internal Organizing, 6–7.

^7. Communications Workers of America, Mobilization to Build Power.

^8. Service Employees International Union, Contract Campaign Manual.

^9. Hurd, “Rise and Fall of the Organizing Model,” 194–6.

^10. Sweeney, Trumka, and Chavez-Thompson, A New Voice.

^11. AFL-CIO, “Organizing for Change.”

^12. Turner, Katz, and Hurd, Rekindling the Movement.

^13. Hurd, “Rise and Fall of the Organizing Model,” 199.

^14. Hurd, “The Failure of Organizing,” 10.

^15. Milkman, “Divided We Stand”; Hurd, “US Labor 2006,” 318–9.

^16. Estreicher and Bodie, “Administrative Delay at the NLRB,” 87.

^17. Kirkland, “The Class of 1930 Fellowship,” 6.

^18. Trumka, “Why Labor Law has Failed,” 871, 874, 877.

^19. Gross, “The Demise of the National Labor Policy,” 46, 47, 49.

^20. Kirkland, Statement of Lane Kirkland, Secretary Treasurer, 1589.

^21. Kirkland, “Statement of Lane Kirkland,” 9, 20.

^22. AFL-CIO, Recommendations of the AFL-CIO, 6, 10, 13.

^23. Trumka, “Building to Win.”

^24. Greenhouse, “NLRB Rules would Streamline Unionizing.”

^25. Johnson and Snell, “Sparks Fly on NLRB's Modest Proposal.”

^26. Meyerson, “Labor's Hail Mary Pass.”

^27. Trumka, “The Crisis of Neo-liberlism,” 255, 264.