When Mobilization is Not Enough: Political Mediation, Framing, and the Use of Direct Democracy Devices by the Labor Movement in Response to Anti-Union Legislation

ABSTRACT

The political context of the United States has become increasingly anti-union, and legislation that threatens the ability of unions to collect dues and collectively bargain has been introduced and passed in many states. In an increasingly hostile political climate, mobilization is not sufficient for the labor movement to achieve success in the policy arena. Labor movement campaigns that arose in 2011 in Ohio and Wisconsin in response to legislation curtailing collective bargaining rights of public employees provide two important examples of responses to anti-union legislation. Neither campaign was able to prevent the passage of the legislation through mobilization, but the labor movement campaign in Ohio still achieved a successful outcome by repealing the legislation through a binding referendum. This paper discusses how social movement theories—political mediation and framing—can help us to understand what led to the success of the movement in Ohio but not Wisconsin. I argue that the movement in Ohio was successful because in an unfavorable political context they were able to take advantage of a key opening in the political opportunity structure – the referendum – and were also able to exploit a framing opportunity provided by the scope of the legislation.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Steve Lopez, Andrew Martin, Eric Schoon, Kent Redding, Jennifer Jordan, Kristin Sziarto, and Mark Mantyh for feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Elizabeth Klainot-Hess

Elizabeth Klainot-Hess is a PhD candidate at the Ohio State University. She studies contingent and precarious work, workplace inequality, academic labor, and labor movements. Her dissertation is a qualitative, interview-based study of contingent faculty at public research-intensive universities. She has a forthcoming article based on this research in Research in the Sociology of Work. Elizabeth is currently preparing a book manuscript based on her dissertation research that examines the consequences of the transformation of higher education and growth of contingent faculty positions.