APSA LABOR PROJECT
NEWSLETTER
Vol 1. No. 1
Summer 2007
Welcome
to the first newsletter of the Labor Project.
The Labor Project was launched at the 2004 APSA annual meeting. Our aim is to harness the efforts of a
working group of political scientists to encourage the study and research of
labor issues and to promote labor research to the public at large particularly
in relation to pressing policy issues.
We
would like to thank The Caucus for New Political Science, of which the Labor
Project is an affiliated group, for its continued support of this project and
for providing web space, resources, and members. In particular, we thank Christine Kelly for
her behind the scenes efforts on this project.
Please
note our business meeting will be Saturday, September 1 at
Also
note that the workers from the Congress Hotel are on strike and would
appreciate your joining their picket line 7am-9pm at 520 South Michigan Ave
(corner of Congress). This is about 13
blocks south of the Hyatt, on Grant Park, a few blocks south of the Art
Institute of Chicago. For more on the
strike visit www.congresshotelstrike.info.
Table of
Contents:
—From the Editor
—APSA 2007
—APSA 2006
—Feature Article: Labor and the Congressional Democrats after 2006 by Taylor E. Dark III
—
—Political Science in
Action: Testifying before Congress by
Gordon Lafer
—Put Your PS in Action: The Employee Free Choice Act
—APSA Responds: Annual Meeting Hotel Policy
—Behind the Scenes
—Member Updates
From the Editor:
By Maggie
Gray
It is with regret that I announce Gordon Lafer, my
indefatigable co-chair, will be stepping down at the end of this month. Gordon and Christine Kelly were the original
co-chairs of the Labor Project, both of whom used their exceptional talents to
shape this project and pass on valuable insight and skills to me (for which I
am extremely grateful). Gordon promises
to continue to be actively involved. He
will be unable to attend this year’s APSA, but will be there in spirit.
Peter Francia, assistant professor of political
science at
This newsletter includes
updates on our accomplishments and a call for political scientists to put their
expertise into action. In this issue, we
are promoting your involvement to help pass the Employee Free Choice Act
(EFCA), federal legislation that would overhaul the process for union
recognition and bargaining. We are
pleased that Doug Woodson of AFSCME, will be addressing us at the annual
meeting about the EFCA. He will discuss
the campaign to organize
In
2002, workers at Resurrection Health Care approached the AFSCME Council 31,
We are also proud that Taylor Dark from
APSA 2007:
Our
business meeting will be Saturday,
September 1 at
We
are pleased to highlight our co-sponsored panels and are very grateful to New
Political Science for co-sponsoring both of them (and lending support to the
working groups).
FOOD AND POWER
Co-sponsored by New
Political Science
Thursday, Aug 30,
Chair:
Margaret Gray,
Author(s):
Risk
and Illegal Immigration: Governmentality and Bio-power Among Agricultural and
Meat Packing Workers
Eric
R. Boehme,
Chicano
Labor: The Construction of Legality, Space and New Destination Immigration
Armando
Ibarra,
The
New York Agricultural Issue Network’s Power over Labor Policy
Margaret
Gray,
A
Geography of Violence: Dividing Labor and Space on the Kill Floor of an Industrialized
Slaughterhouse
Timothy
Pachirat, New School for Social Research
Discussant:
Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado,
Roundtable:
Bringing
the Workers Back In: New Issues in Comparative Labor Politics
Co-sponsored by New Political
Science
Friday, Aug 31,
Chair:
Richard Michael Locke, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Participants:
Maria Lorena Cook, Cornell
University
Janice Fine, Rutgers University
Mary E. Gallagher, University of
Michigan
Rebecca Givan, Cornell University
Chris Howell,
Oberlin College
A
comprehensive list of labor-related panels was emailed in an attachment to you
if we have your email. If you need a
copy, please email maggiegray@hotmail.com
and put labor panel list request in the subject line. Thank you to Susan Orr for compiling this
list.
Working Group on Labor and Politics
Description:
What
is happening with organized labor and politics? This group will attend panels
and discuss recent developments on issues related to organized labor, work and
politics. The group is open to those of all methodological persuasions and
subfields.
Coordinators: Peter
Francia (
Session 1: Fri, Aug 31,
Working Group on Immigration and
Description: This working group will
discuss how, both historically and politically, public policy and political
(non)action affected the ways in which we think about citizenship and
non-citizenship, low-wage immigrant workers, nativism, and anti-immigrant
backlash. This working group will invite attention to scholarship overlapping
public policy, political behavior and opinion, and urban politics with issues
concerning race, ethnicity, and immigration.
Coordinators: Margaret
Gray (
Session 1: Thurs, Aug 30,
APSA 2006:
We
would also like again to thank our co-sponsors for last year’s panels:
Labor
Rising: Effective Strategies in Graduate and Faculty Union Organizing
Roundtable
co-sponsored by New Political Science
Unions and
Workers in Developing and Post-Communist Nations
Co-sponsored
by Comparative Politics
Feature Article:
Labor and the Congressional Democrats after
2006
By Taylor E. Dark III
The
election of a new Democratic congressional majority in November 2006 raises
anew some longstanding questions about the ability of labor unions effectively to
alter public policy through their alignment with Democratic party
officeholders. While it has sometimes
been suggested that the labor/Democrat alliance contains innate limitations that
do not change appreciably over time, there is also evidence that developments
in the contemporary party system have created a rather different playing field
for unionists than the one they faced for much of the 20th
century. A comparison of the strategy of
union leaders in the early 1960s, and the prevailing situation today, points to
ways in which labor may be able to manipulate the political system more
effectively than in the past, perhaps leading to some surprising outcomes
should the Democrats gain control of both Congress and the presidency in 2009.
Asked
in the early 1960s to describe the political strategy of organized labor,
United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther offered a candid assessment: “The
American labor movement is essentially trying to work within the two-party
structure, but to bring about a basic realignment so that the two parties
really stand for distinct points of view.”1 In embracing this strategy, Reuther
articulated a conception of American politics that has long been attractive to
political scientists, especially those of a more liberal bent. The famous 1950 report of the American
Political Science Association Committee on Political Parties expressed similar
support for a two-party system in which voters were “offered a proper range of
choice between alternatives of action.”
Distinctive choices could best be achieved, the Committee argued, by the
development of disciplined parties based on comprehensive platforms that were
widely publicized and to which politicians were held accountable. In considering the probable response of
interest groups to such an initiative, the Committee predicted that
“large-membership organizations with wise leadership will generally support the
turn toward more responsible parties.”
The report noted that the growth of one such “large-membership” group –
national labor unions – had already contributed to a nationalization of issues
and alignments that was conducive to the long-run development of more
ideologically coherent, issue-based parties.2
While
its support for responsible parties was controversial, the APSA report was
prescient in its prediction that an encompassing group like organized labor
would be sympathetic to the idea of more disciplined party organizations. Of course, to achieve the required level of
ideological unity would entail a considerable reshuffling of partisan
alignments. Conservative congressional
Democrats based mainly in the South would have to be replaced by liberals, or forced
to leave the party altogether for the more congenial offerings of the
Republicans. Conversely, liberal and
moderate Republicans in the Northeast, West, and elsewhere would have to make
their way to the Democratic party. As it
turned out, a major catalyst for such change would be the rise of the civil
rights movement, and the eventual support for its agenda by key leaders in the
national Democratic party and organized labor.
Andrew Biemiller, the AFL-CIO’s Director of Legislation during the
1960s, explained the deeper political logic behind the federation’s support for
civil rights reforms: “The 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights bill
will greatly increase the voting strength of Negroes in some of the previously
uncontested, conservative districts in the South, bringing new forces into play
in this long dormant area.”3
He continued: “We would have no objection to seeing a strong Republican
party appear in the South. It might turn Southern Democrats into a more liberal
group.”4 Through such changes, the two parties would
be made more distinct, and a more logical liberal/conservative partisan
differentiation achieved.
With
this long-term historical reshuffling now largely complete, the twenty-first
century party system is one that approximates the APSA/Reuther vision to a
greater degree than commonly recognized. The South has become an arena of
two-party competition in which Democratic officeholders evince policy
commitments similar to those of their national counterparts. While this has meant fewer southern Democrats
in Congress, it has also contributed markedly to a homogenization of
preferences within the congressional party.
At the same time, the Democrats have made gains in the Northeast and the
West – a reflection, in part, of the disaffection of liberal and moderate
Republicans weary of the growing influence of Southern conservatives and
fundamentalist Christians within their own party. The result of this reversal in the geographic
bases of the parties has been a polarization of congressional politics that is
entirely in keeping with what Biemiller and Reuther had seen as the desired
state of the
During
the 1990s and early 2000s, the polarization and associated increase in party
discipline seemed to redound only to the benefit of the Republicans as they
retained their congressional majorities in election after election. After the results in 2006, however, the
possibility that a more polarized and disciplined party system might benefit
labor, liberals, and the Democrats no longer seems so far-fetched. The
elections confirmed an ongoing regional realignment, with Democrats gaining
about 30 percent of previously GOP-held House seats in the Northeast, about 15
percent in the
In
theory, the changing party alignments should improve the odds of enacting
labor’s legislative agenda. A more
homogenous congressional party armed with the tools of party discipline forged
by the outgoing Republican majority ought to be able to cohere more effectively
on behalf of liberal policies. To test
this claim, the most appropriate issue to examine is that of labor law reform,
which has for decades been at the top of labor’s agenda. In the 109th Congress, union
allies introduced a bill known as the Employee Freedom of Choice Act (EFCA),
which would require employers to accept the “card-check” procedure for union
recognition, increase fines on employers who fire union organizers, and promote
the negotiation of first-time labor contracts.
Although the bill did not spur a large public controversy comparable to
some earlier labor law efforts, the provision to change the system for union
recognition (abandoning the “secret ballot” procedures of the National Labor
Relations Act of 1935) has the potential to boost labor’s organizing efforts
significantly. Unsurprisingly, EFCA was
strongly opposed by the business community and congressional Republicans. Despite such opposition, the bill passed the
House of Representatives in March 2007 by a healthy margin of 241 to 185
(although far short of the two-thirds needed to overturn a presidential
veto). In the Senate, however, the bill
encountered the same problem that has bedeviled advocates of labor law reform
since the New Deal: the use of the Senate filibuster by labor’s opponents to
require a super-majority of 60 votes. On
June 26, an effort to defeat a Republican-led filibuster failed, with only 51
votes in favor, and only one Republican (Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania) voting
with labor (Democratic Senator Timothy Johnson of South Dakota was unable to
vote for medical reasons).
While
the defeat of EFCA is just that – a defeat – the failure occurred in a different
way from the usual post-war pattern. As
Table 1 shows, in previous battles over labor law reform unions always had to
deal with major Democratic defections in both the House and Senate (thus
creating the notorious “conservative coalition” that so often blocked liberal
reforms). The percentage of Democrats
voting against labor has, however, been steadily declining since the
1940s. This trend reached its
culmination in 2007, when only two House Democrats (both from southern
states) voted against labor (despite the affiliation of 44 Democrats with the
Blue Dog caucus of self-identified moderates and conservatives), and not a
single Democratic senator voted against labor. In the House, the total number of Democratic
votes in favor of labor law reform was the highest recorded in the postwar
period. The biggest problem for labor in
2007, then, was not Democratic defections, but rather the simple fact of
Republican unity in a Senate where Democrats had a bare majority to begin
with.
The
tantalizing question raised by this new pattern is whether an increased
Democratic majority in the Senate, perhaps reaching the 60 votes needed to
overcome a filibuster, could hold together as well as the current majority of
49 Democrats and two independents.
Obviously, it may be the case that a larger Democratic Senate majority
would include legislators from more conservative states who would be less
likely to vote with labor. It is
revealing that the total number of votes in favor of labor law reform
(including in the tally Republicans as well as Democrats) reached a highpoint
in 1977 and 1978, and that the count was significantly lower in 2007. Unfortunately for labor, the increased
cohesion of the current Democratic majority reflects not just changing
coalitions, but also the diminished size and breadth of the Democratic
electorate as a whole. Nonetheless, the
fact of increasing Democratic party unity suggests that relatively narrow
Democratic congressional majorities combined with strong Democratic
presidential leadership might be more capable of delivering more union-friendly
legislative results than many would expect.
Such a scenario would involve the Democrats using the leverage of party
discipline to shift policy results to the left of the median voter – much as
Republicans achieved “off-center” results of their own following the election
of George W. Bush.6
The
election of 2006, while exceptionally gratifying to unions and their
supporters, did not yet provide the means for overcoming the blockage points
that have prevented pro-union reforms in labor law. Major policy change will still require the
election not only of a Democratic executive, but of a much larger and more
robust Democratic Senate majority. The accomplishment of both tasks will pose
major challenges to union leaders and activists in 2008 and beyond. Even so, the increased unity of the
Democratic party shows that the labor movement now faces a party system that in
important ways approximates the ideal that was articulated by Walter Reuther
and Andrew Biemiller nearly five decades ago.
Ironically, it is far from clear that the realigned system can actually
produce the progressive policy results that union leaders and liberal political
scientists originally envisioned.
Bio: Taylor E. Dark III is an
Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at California State
University, Los Angeles, and is the author of The Unions and the Democrats:
An Enduring Alliance, Updated Edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2001).
Political Science
in Action:
By
Gordon Lafer
Testifying before Congress
In
February 2007, Gordon Lafer was called to testify before the U.S. House of
Representatives on the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require employers
to recognize unions whenever a majority of workers sign cards declaring their
desire to represent themselves through that union. The primary argument
against this bill, advanced by business lobbies, is that it would rob workers
of their right to a secret-ballot, democratic election under the National Labor
Relations Board. Lafer's research — which has been supported by the American
Rights at Work foundation — uses a political science framework to compare NLRB
election procedures with those used to define "free and fair"
elections in the American political tradition, showing how far short NLRB
practice falls from traditional democratic standards. Lafer's testimony
to the House Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions presented the
key findings of this research.
Gordon
Lafer’s report Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of
Democracy Under National Labor Relations Board Elections is available at
the American Rights at Work website
http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/resources/studies.cfm
Put your PS in
Action:
The
Employee Free Choice Act
By
Gordon Lafer
An
ongoing debate took place in this year’s Congress and is likely to be replayed
in the next Congress. The issue is the
Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), the most significant attempt at reforming
EFCA would make it easier for workers to choose to
form a union by doing three things: 1) mandating that employers must recognize
their employees' union whenever a majority of employees make signed statements
that they want to form a union; 2) increasing penalties on those who break the
law; and 3) requiring that, when workers sit down with their employers to
negotiate a first contract, if they cannot come to any agreement the matter
will be referred to an impartial arbitrator.
Anti-union business lobbies have mounted a major
publicity offensive to defeat this bill — which passed the House and looks to
have a reasonable chance of getting majority support in the Senate. The key
argument made by these lobbies is that the bill would deprive workers of the
right to a secret ballot election under the National Labor Relations Board.
This is false because 1) under the new bill, workers still have the right to a
secret ballot election if that is the route they choose to go; they just also have
the additional right to demand recognition based on signed statements; and 2)
the NLRB election system looks more like the sham election systems of one-party
states in other countries than like anything we would call American democracy
(this has been the focus of my own and others' research).
Editorials
It
is particularly important that the voices of Political Scientists be heard in
this debate, through op-eds and letters to the editor. If you are interested in background
information and/or would like to be put on an email distribution
list for more information, please email glafer@uoregon.edu.
If you are interested in writing op-eds or letters
to editors on this issue, please let us know. We will let you know when there
are important pieces that you might write a response to, or pro-actively when
there are important venues where an op-ed might be particularly welcome.
Doug Woodson from AFSCME will be at the
business meeting to discuss how you can put your PS in action relating to the
EFCA.
We are pleased
to report that Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele wrote a column in the May 11
issue of the Chronicle of Higher
Education titled “How the Employee Free Choice Act Would Help
Colleges.” A slightly longer version of
the piece (not focused on colleges) was published by TomPaine.com. You can find that at http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/05/10/labor_law_reform_not_just_for_unions.php
PLEASE
tell us how you are putting your PS in action so we can report it. Send your update to maggiegray@hotmail.com
APSA Responds to
Our Call:
You
may remember we have been making efforts to have the APSA Council adopt a
stronger hotel policy relating to labor issues.
We are proud to announce that the Annual Review Committee has recommended to the Council
a policy that not only strengthens APSA's standard contract language to cancel
in case of picket lines, but also for the first time puts in a union preference
policy, that — all other things (e.g., costs) being equal— the organization
will give preference to union hotels.
(See below for their official recommendation.) And — pleasant
surprise — the survey of members conducted by the Annual Review Committee found
strong majority support for the union preference policy (more details
below).
The
APSA Council will be meeting during this year's meeting to vote on adopting or
rejecting the committee's recommendations. We have submitted a formal
proposal to the Council that they adopt the recommendations, and that they also
have APSA subscribe to INMEX (Informed Meeting Exchange), an organization with
links to UNITE-HERE that provides the most advanced and reliable information on
potential upcoming labor disputes. It costs nothing to subscribe to
INMEX, and subscribers do not commit themselves to being bound in any way on
choice of hotel. We hope the Council
will support this.
You may be curious to read
how your political science colleagues feel about such a hotel policy. The Annual Review Committee conducted a
survey about the conference. According
to their report, posted at http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/AnnualMtgAttendeesSurvey.pdf,
of the 6261 APSA members registered for the 2006 annual meeting, 2492
individuals completed the survey. There
were two questions that addressed APSA policies toward labor disputes.
A majority, 57 percent,
favored the APSA policy that allows it to withdraw for a contract in the case
of a labor dispute, 13 percent opposed this policy, and 22 percent said “don’t
know.”
A similar majority of 57
percent supported the APSA adopting a “union preference policy” meaning that if
cost is not an issue it would prefer to use hotels that either have a union or
have permitted fair union elections, 19 percent opposed this policy, and 17
percent said “unsure.”
As
a result of our efforts and the committee’s own survey and research, they have
recommended the following:
2.
Union Preference Policy. APSA should adopt a slightly more rigorous policy to
prefer union hotels and providers for its meetings.
a.
Those responsible for negotiating and administering hotel and service contracts
for the APSA Annual Meeting and any other meeting organized by the national
Association shall make every effort to give preference to a suitable unionized
hotel and/or service provider, cost considerations being otherwise equal.
b.
Further, the standard contract language should be amended as indicated in bold
below:
10.01
Performance
Neither
party (hotel and APSA) shall be responsible for any failure of performance due
to acts of God, war, government regulation, disaster, labor disputes and
strikes, civil disorder, curtailment of transportation facilities, shortage of
commodities or supplies to be furnished by the [name of hotel], or other
emergencies making it inadvisable, illegal or impossible to provide the
facilities or to hold the meeting in the hotel or city as originally planned.
It is provided that this agreement may be terminated for any one or more of
such reasons by written notice from one party to the other ADD: “without
penalty or liability.”
[a]
the Hotel shall provide APSA written notification of pending labor contract
terminations or changes.
Rationale:
a.
Although the Committee has received requests that we take more aggressive
pro-labor stances, and despite the sympathy of a majority of members surveyed
for such positions, as a professional association our position can only extend
as far as the best interest of the profession. The current language makes it
clear that “labor friendly” policies are preferable. Moreover, we felt any
greater change in this policy was a matter for the Council, not for us.
b.
The Association’s contract already includes force majeure clauses that permit
the Association to terminate a contract in the event of a labor dispute. We
have suggested a slight change in that language.
Behind the Scenes:
We
are currently updating the Labor Project’s history and maintaining an archive
on the hotel policy work we have done.
Our webpage, hosted on the Caucus for New Political Science website, is
being updated. We are still collecting
syllabi on labor themes; please email them to maggiegray@hotmail.com if you have
them. We apologize for their absence on
our webpage and are working to get them back up there. We are also working on a petition to have
political scientists show their support for the ECFA.
Member Updates:
We have several book announcements, congratulations
to the authors:
Assembling Women: The Feminization of Global
Manufacturing (Cornell/ILR Press)
Teri Caraway,
Despite the massive influx
of women into the labor force as a result of globalization, the gender inequalities
at work have remained largely unchanged. This book addresses two related
questions: What has prompted the feminization of manufacturing work in
developing countries, and why has it failed to significantly erode gender
inequalities at work? Teri L. Caraway offers case studies and in-depth analysis
of employment changes in
Unexpected Power: Conflict
and Change among Transnational Activists (Cornell/ILR Press)
Shareen Hertel, UCONN
Shareen Hertel explores the
dramatic negotiations within cross-border human rights campaigns. Activists on
the receiving end of such campaigns do much more than seek the help of powerful
allies beyond their borders. They often also challenge outsiders'
understandings of basic human rights—in some cases, directly (by “blocking”
campaigns intended to help them) and in other cases, indirectly (by employing
“backdoor moves” aimed at more subtly introducing new human rights norms).
Hertel looks closely at struggles for human rights in two contexts: 1)
Challenging Authority: How
Ordinary People Change
Frances Fox Piven,
In Challenging Authority,
Frances Fox Piven argues that ordinary people exercise extraordinary political
courage and power in American politics when, frustrated by politics as usual,
they rise up in anger and hope, and defy the authorities and the status quo
rules that ordinarily govern their daily lives. By doing so, they disrupt the
workings of important institutions and become a force in American politics.
Drawing on critical episodes in
Unions in Crisis? The Future of Organized Labor in
(Forthcoming Dec 2007)
Michael Schiavone,
In Unions in Crisis, Michael Schiavone examines how social justice
unionism has improved society for all, by fighting for workplace (such as
higher wages) and non-workplace issues (such as the fight for adequate childcare
or against racism). On purely
"bread-and-butter" issues, these unions have achieved better
collective bargaining agreements than their rival mainstream unions, as well as
organizing more new workers per capita. How much strength organized labor will
regain by embracing social justice unionism is uncertain, but it is a
beginning. Schiavone outlines suggestions for unions to regain their
strength.
Building States without
Society: European Union Enlargement and the Transfer of EU Social Policy to
Focusing on the 2004
enlargement of the European Union, Building States without Society highlights
the real limits of cross-national rule transfer even when power is uneven
between rule-makers and rule-takers. Tracing the role of labor and other
non-state actors in transferring rules, Beate Sissenich shows the persistent
relevance of national politics—specifically state capacity and interest
organizations. Social network analysis demonstrates that even in a highly
integrated
Other announcements:
Yuen
Yuen ANG (PhD Candidate,
Peter Francia,
Margaret
Gray,
APSA LABOR PROJECT
Leadership
Co-Chairs
Maggie
Gray,
Peter
Francia,
Advisory
Committee
Mark
Anner,
David
Cingranelli, SUNY
Mike
Goldfield,
Maggie
Gray,
Christine
Kelly,
Gordon
Lafer,
Margaret
Levi, University Washington
Melissa
Mason,
Manny
Adolph
Reed,