Paperbackisbn-0-88099-079-1; $21.95 Hardcover -- ISBN -0- 88099- 080 -5)

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Paperbackisbn-0-88099-079-1; $21.95 Hardcover -- ISBN -0- 88099- 080 -5) DOCUMENT RESUME ED 313- CE 053 780 AUTHOR Hutchens, Robert; And Others TITLE Strikers-and Subsidies. The Influence of Government Transfer Ptograms on:Strike Activity. INSTITUTION Upjohn (W.E.) Inst. for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, Mich. 'REPORT NO ISBN-0,88099-079-1 PUB DATE 89 NOTE 234p. AVAILABLE FROMW.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 300 South Westnedge Avenue, Kalamazoo, NI 49007 ($12.95 paperbackISBN-0-88099-079-1; $21.95 hardcover -- ISBN -0- 88099- 080 -5). pUB TYPE Books (010) --'Reports - Research/Technical (143) EDRS PRICE MFO1 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *Eligibility; Labor Demands; Labor Problems; *Strikes; *Unemployment Insurance; *Unions; Welfare .Recipients; *Welfare Services IDENTIFIERS Aid. to Families with Dependent Children ABSTRACT The effects of government transfer programs such as unemployment insurance and welfare assistance on strikes were studied -by analyzing state -level -data on strike frequency from 1960 through 1974. Effects -were estimated 1.,4 using ordinary least squares_ regression, supplementing traditional models of strike activity with Measures of transfer program characteri'.ics. No support Was found for the claim that-Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, or general assistance affect strikes. HoWever, evidence was found linking unemployment insurance payments to the frequency of strikeF., with a more generous unemployment insurance program being as....:)ciated with a higher strike frequency. No conclusions were possiblepn-whether unemployment insurance programs affect either strike duration-or the number of workers involved in strikes. Either there are no effects or-the-methods used were not precise enough to measure the_effects,of two states, -(New York and Rhode Island) provision of unemployment compensation to strikers after a waiting period of 7-8 weeks. (The document includes a list of 109 references.) (OIL) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from theorigihal document. 0- p 0 &IL DEPARTMENT Or EOUCA7101 'Pace or careabonst Research and Imptevenent ECt. TIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) docuMent hes be sn reproduced as f." mowed from the parson or organs:Atm" ononebno it 3 'Amor changes have be made to improve rerooduchon oughts. o 'Points°. reser), %moans stated on the door- 'meta do not womanly represent othcm1 OEM position or pokey. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL IN MICCORCHE ONLY HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONL_ ACES iNFORMATKIN CENTER (ENO." STRIKERS and SUBSIDIES The Influence of Government Transfer Programs on Strike Activity Robert Hutchens. David Lipsky Robert Stern New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations Cornell University 1989 W. E. UPJOHN INSTITUTE for Employment Research Kalamazoo, Michigan 3 Library of Congress Catalogig-in-Pablicadon Data Hutchens, Robert M. Strikers and subsidies : the influence of government transfer programs on Artie activity / by Robert Hutchens, David Lipsky, Robert Stern. p. cm. Inchides bibliographical refererrAts. ISBN 0-88099-080-5. ISBN 0-88099-079-1 (pbk.) 1. Strikes and lockoutsGovernment policyUnited States. 2. Insurance, UnemploymcntUnited States.3. Labor disputes United States.4. Insurance, Strike -- United States.5. Trade unionsUnited StatesStrike benefits.6. Transfer payments United States. I. Lipsky, David B., 1939- .H. Stern, Robert N., 1948- .III. Title. HD5324.H79 331.89'8dc20 89-16693 Up co Copyright © 1989 W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research THE INSTITUTE, a nonprofit research orpnization was established on July 1, 1945. It is an activity of the W. E. Upjohn Unemployment Trustee Corporation, which was formed in 1932 to administer a fund set aside by the late Dr. W. E Upjohn for the purpose of carrying on "research into the causes and effects of unemployment and measures for the alleviation of unemployment." The facts presented in this study and the obs-rvations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. 4 Authors Robert Hutcheni is professor of LaborEconomics at Comell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He also serves as Chairman of the Depart- ment of Labor Economics. Hutchens received his Ph.D. in-economics from. the University bf Wisconsin in 1976, specializing in labor economics,-public finance, and econometrics. He has&written several papers on the economics of government transfer programs, With an einphit.sis on unemployment insurance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In 198041- he was a Policy FehOW at the Brookings InStitutionicleyoting-part of his time to the Depart- -4 ment of Health and Human Serviem In 1984 he was a visitor in the Depart- ment Of Ebonomies at the University Of British Columbia. His current research, encompasses not only government duapsfer programs, but also long-term im- plicit contracts and Ai market for older Workers: David Lipsky is Dean of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell UniVerSity. Lipsky has been a Memb er. of the Cornell Univer; shy faculty for 20 years. His field of teaching and research is collective bargain- ing. He has been associate dean for academic affairs at ILR, and assistant prd- fessor, SUNY, Buffalo; visiting associate professor, MIT; visiting associate professor, Reston University; C->Director, Harvard Institute in Employment and Training Administration, adjunct lecturer,t0randeisPniVersity; and visiting scholar, University:of British :Columbia. He has Served' as Chairman of the Department of colleciiv,e Bargaining, Labor Law; and Ltor History; and as Editor and Associate Editor of-the ILR Review. He haS published over X_ articles anii-essayS and is the author or editor of 11 hobo, including Collec- tive Bargaining in American Industry (1987), and Paying for Better Teaching (1984): Robert Stern is associate professor of,9rganizational Behavior and Sociology at Cornelrs School of Industrial and Labcir Relations. He has completed ex- tensive research on the determinants of strikes and currently works in the areas of worker partiiapation and union-management cooperation. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Leiden,`The Netherlands and a visiting professor at the School of Management and:Institute of Industrial -Relations at the Uni,yersity of 'California at Berkeley. Stern has written or. coauthored 30 articles and 4 boblcs, including Employee Ownership in Plant Shutdowns, ESOPs: Benefits for,Whom? and Worker Participation and Ownership: Cooperative Strategies for Strengthening Local Economies. iv 6 Acknowledgements This volume is the culmination of a research project that we conducted over the courseilf several years. During that period we relied on numerous people for support, advice, information, data, and assistance. The project was sup- :ported by a grant from The W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Rese,arch. We owe a special debt of gratitiide to the Upjohn Institute, and particularly to H. Allan Hunt, Louis Jacobson, and the late Earl Wright for their encourage- nienti comments, and suggestions. We especially thank Lou Jacobson for pro- viding us with valuable .comments on and criticisms of the early versions of several chapters. Charles Relunin, former dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Rela- tioni at Cornell University, was enthusiastic about the project and encouraged us to begin: we are grateful for his support. Robert Doherty, the current dean ofthe ILR Schcidl, was equally encouraging and we acknowledge our gratitude 'to .iin. We also thank Ronald Ehrenberg, professor and Director of Research at the ILR School, who:helped to make our research task-a little easier than it :night have been and offered advice at every stage of the project. The nuthors conducted interviews with many government, union, and manager eat representatives, and we thank them all for their cooperation and assistance: Through the auspices of the Interstate Conference of Employment Security Agencies, we also conducted a survey of administrators of 54 state- level employment security agencies. We wish to thank William L. Heartwell, Jr. of the ICESA for making this survey possible. Many of the survey respondents supplied us with invaluable information on the treatment of labor disputes wider their unemployment insurance statutes, and we thank them all fortheirhelp. William J. Yost,Chief Hearing Officer with,the Iowa empldy= went sec' ity agency, and George A. Michaud, Chief Hearing Officer Viith 'Alaska Agency, also provided us with information on some of the impoitant aspects of their state laws, and we appreciate their assistance. We obtained the information and'Jata we needed to conduct this stud from individuals in a variety of federal, 'Srate, and private agencies; we benefited from having the services of several research assistan: computer program- mers; we used several' secretaries to type and re-type our work; and we used a crew of students to code and verify the data used in the analysis. All of these individuals ars thanked by name in Appendix A. If we have inadvertently omit- ted from this appendix the names of people who assisted us, we apologize to them and want them to know that we are grateful. We would be remiss if we did not especially thank Tim Schmid le, who supervised the collection, coding, and verification of the data, and Nancy Hank. and Melissa Barringer, whose diligent assistance greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. Of course
Recommended publications
  • Tape Subject Log (Rev
    1 NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF Tape Subject Log (rev. 10/08) Conversation No. 60-1 Date: June 8, 1971 Time: 8:03 am - unknown before 10:31 am Location: Cabinet Room The President met with Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, John B. Connally, Melvin R. Laird, John N. Mitchell, Winton M. (“Red”) Blount, Rogers C. B. Morton, Clifford M. Hardin, Maurice H. Stans, James D. Hodgson, Elliot L. Richardson, George W. Romney, John A. Volpe, George P. Shultz, Robert H. Finch, Donald H. Rumsfeld, George H. W. Bush, John D. Ehrlichman, Clark MacGregor, Peter M. Flanigan, Peter G. Peterson, Herbert G. Klein, Dr. Edward E. David, Jr., Raymond K. Price, Jr., Ronald L. Ziegler, Robert J. Brown, Edward L. Morgan, Edwin L. Harper, John C. Whitaker, Neal Ball, Egil (“Bud”) Krogh, Jr., Raymond J. Waldman, Leonard Garment, John F. Evans, Jr., Lewis A. Engman, Roy D. Morey, Peter Michel, Geoffrey C. Shepard, Martin C. (“Marty”) Anderson, Kenneth R. Cole, Jr., Paul W. McCracken, Caspar W. (“Cap”) Weinberger, Arnold R. Weber, and Arthur J. Sohmer [General conversation/Unintelligible] Attendance at meeting -Aids to Cabinet officers -Ehrlichman’s view of input -Responsibilities of those attending -Domestic Policy Council planning -Budget planning for Fiscal Year 1973 -Legislative package -Republican Party platform Topics/Issues -Homes in America -Goals -Policy -Programs -Focus of discussion -Domestic Council approach -Identification of next year’s issues -Summary of action-forcing events -1972 election -Emphasis -Action needed -Polls -Perceptions of people 2 NIXON
    [Show full text]
  • Analysis of WORK STOPPAGES 1960
    Analysis of WORK STOPPAGES 1960 Bulletin No.1302 September 1961 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Arthur J. Goldberg, Secretary BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS Ewan Clague, Commissioner For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C. - Price 30 cents Preface This bulletin presents a detailed statistical anal- ysis of work stoppages in 1960, continuing an annual fea- ture of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' program in the field of industrial relations. Preliminary monthly esti- mates of the level of strike (or lockout) activity for the United States as a whole are issued about 30 days after the end of the month of reference and are available upon request. Preliminary estimates for the entire year are available at the year's end; selected final tabulations are issued in April of the following year. The methods used in preparing work stoppage statistics are described in appendix B. The Bureau wishes to acknowledge the coopera- tion of employers and employer associations, labor unions, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and various State agencies in furnishing information on work stoppages. This report was prepared in the Bureau's Divi- sion of Wages and Industrial Relations by Loretto R. Nolan and Julian Malnak under the direction of Joseph W. Bloch. Contents Page Summary_—____----__________-----------______ ______ -----_____—_—_--------- 1 Trends in work stoppages. ----,-----------------__________—_--_____—____ 1 Sizeof stoppages ---------------------___________--------------_—_---------
    [Show full text]
  • Labor and the Cold War
    University of Central Florida STARS PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements 1-1-1959 Labor and the cold war Stewart Meacham Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Book is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recommended Citation Meacham, Stewart, "Labor and the cold war" (1959). PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements. 522. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/prism/522 COLD WAR by STEWART MEACHAM AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENT Friends in the labor movement as well as colleagues on the staff of th American Friends Service Committee have been kind enough to read th manuscript of this pamphlet. I have profited greatly from their comments and criticism, but full responsibility for the finished product is mine alone. It represents my own views and not necessarily those of friends nor of the Peace Education Program of the American Friends Semi Committee. September, 1959 Stewart Meacham COLD QWAR by STEWART MEACHAM Pzibli~hedar an educaiional service by PEACEEDUCATION PROGRAM AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE 160 North 15th St., Philadelphia 2, Pa. CONTENTS Introduction .................................................... I I . The Cold War and the Domestic Economy . I1. The Cold War and National Security ............ 111 . The Cold War and World Economic Development IV . What Can Be Done? Bibliography INTRODUCTION During the last 12 years the United States and the Soviet Union have been engaged in cold war.
    [Show full text]
  • American Working-Class Identity and Memory Within Transformations of Capitalism Andy Stec
    Hamline University DigitalCommons@Hamline Departmental Honors Projects College of Liberal Arts Spring 2019 “It’s in the Blood”: American Working-Class Identity and Memory within Transformations of Capitalism Andy Stec Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/dhp Part of the Labor History Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Stec, Andy, "“It’s in the Blood”: American Working-Class Identity and Memory within Transformations of Capitalism" (2019). Departmental Honors Projects. 85. https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/dhp/85 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts at DigitalCommons@Hamline. It has been accepted for inclusion in Departmental Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Hamline. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. “It’s in the Blood”: American Working-Class Identity and Memory within Transformations of Capitalism Andrew Joseph Stec An Honors Thesis Submitted for partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with honors in History and Philosophy from Hamline University April 2019 1 Acknowledgements 2 Scholarship on Postwar American Capitalism 7 Reacting to the Crisis of Keynesianism (1967-1990s) 8 In Retrospect to the Fall of Keynesianism (2000s) 25 Postwar American Capitalism in Transition 29 The Postwar Industrial Union 32 The Fall of Keynesianism: Alienation 37 The Fall of Keynesianism: End of Prosperity 39 National Malaise
    [Show full text]
  • Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States
    The Misanthropic Sublime: Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States Jason Resnikoff Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Jason Zachary Resnikoff All rights reserved Abstract “The Misanthropic Sublime: Automation and the Meaning of Work in the Postwar United States” Jason Resnikoff In the United States of America after World War II, Americans from across the political spectrum adopted the technological optimism of the postwar period to resolve one of the central contradictions of industrial society—the opposition between work and freedom. Although classical American liberalism held that freedom for citizens meant owning property they worked for themselves, many Americans in the postwar period believed that work had come to mean the act of maintaining mere survival. The broad acceptance of this degraded meaning of work found expression in a word coined by managers in the immediate postwar period: “automation.” Between the late 1940s and the early 1970s, the word “automation” stood for a revolutionary development, even though few could agree as to precisely what kind of technology it described. Rather than a specific technology, however, this dissertation argues that “automation” was a discourse that defined work as mere biological survival and saw the end of human labor as the the inevitable result of technological progress. In premising liberation on the end of work, those who subscribed to the automation discourse made political freedom contingent not on the distribution of power, but on escape from the limits of the human body itself.
    [Show full text]
  • View / Open Jeung Oregon 0171A 12691.Pdf
    LABOR MARKET POLICY AMERICAN STYLE: STATE CAPACITY AND POLICY INNOVATION, 1959-1968 by YONGWOO JEUNG A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Political Science and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2020 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Yongwoo Jeung Title: Labor Market Policy American Style: State Capacity and Policy Innovation, 1959- 1968 This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Political Science by: Gerald Berk Chairperson Craig Parsons Core Member Joseph Lowndes Core Member Daniel Pope Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded March 2020. ii © 2020 Yongwoo Jeung This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Yongwoo Jeung Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science March 2020 Title: Labor Market Policy American Style: State Capacity and Policy Innovation, 1959- 1968 This dissertation delves into the American state’s capabilities by examining its experiments with corporatism and labor training during the 1960s. The dissertation relies on the frameworks of layering, patchwork, intercurrence, and entrepreneurship from various disciplines including comparative historical analysis, historical institutionalism, American Political Development, and the school of political creativity. The dissertation first challenges the mainstream view that regards as impossible any tripartite bargaining among U.S. labor, management, and the state. The United States experimented with the unique tripartite committee—the President’s Committee on Labor- Management Policy—in the early 1960s to address emerging problems such as automation and intractable industrial conflicts.
    [Show full text]
  • Sources and Extent of Union Power Sylvester Petro
    Notre Dame Law Review Volume 35 Article 4 Issue 5 Symposium 9-1-1960 Sources and Extent of Union Power Sylvester Petro Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Sylvester Petro, Sources and Extent of Union Power, 35 Notre Dame L. Rev. 603 (1960). Available at: http://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol35/iss5/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Notre Dame Law Review by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SOURCES AND EXTENT OF UNION POWER By Sylvester Petro* The most pressing need in labor relations today is a policy which will meet the social threats posed by union power without increasing the even more critical threats posed by big government. Many unions have abused working men and businessmen, exploited consumers, and demonstrated again and again their power to disrupt the economy. The abuses of big government are different, but they are even more deadly and more irrevocable. Unchecked they mean an end to the personal freedom and private property rights which have been the most significant features of western civilization. A policy which will remove the union threat without increasing the role of government is available and can be expressed in very simple terms. Al- though that policy is at present politically unacceptable, politics can be trusted to follow public opinion. The job, therefore, is one of establishing that the gravest threats can be effectively removed without increasing the role and power of government.
    [Show full text]
  • AFSCME Office of the Secretary-Treasurer: Gordon Chapman Records
    THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF STATE, COUNTY AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY-TREASURER Papers, 1926-1968 (predominantly, 1936-1961) 84.25 linear feet Accession Number 1990 L.C. Number MS The papers of the AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer's Office were placed in the Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs in the fall of 1974 and were opened for research in November of 1984. The materials in this collection were created during the presidency of Arnold S. Zander, founder and first president of AFSCME (1935-1961). The Secretary-Trea- surer's Office oversaw the general financial health of the international union, keeping records for its locals, councils and the headquarters staff. If a council or local were placed under trusteeship or evidenced some other difficulty, files documenting these events were also kept here. This office maintained the payment of per capita dues by AFSCME locals and councils, and issued charters to new locals. It also suspended and disbanded locals or councils when problems arose, such as the non-payment of dues. Union organizing itself was under the jurisdiction of the Director of Organization and was a separate function. These papers consist mainly of materials relating to the founding and disbanding of thousands of locals and councils in all the states, Puerto Rico, Panama and Canada. Locals of each state were affiliated with a regional or state council and paid dues to the council as well as to the International. On occasion larger conferences were set up which included councils and locals in several states. During Zander's incumbency, Gordon Chapman was the Secretary-Treasurer for all but a few years.
    [Show full text]
  • Strike Violence: the Need for Federal Injunctions
    University of Pennsylvania Law Review FOUNDED 1852 Formerly American Law Register VOL. 114 FEBRUARY 1966 No. 4 STRIKE VIOLENCE: THE NEED FOR FEDERAL INJUNCTIONS FRANK H. STEWART f & ROBERT J. TowNsED * No country has a good code of laws. The reason for this is evident: the laws have been made according to the time, the place [and] the need. When the needs have changed, the laws which have remained have become ridiculous. Thus the law which forbade the eating of pig and the drinking of wine was very reasonable in Arabia, where pig and wine are injurious. But it is absurd at Constantinople. Voltaire, Laws, from the Philisophical Dictionary An assault is an assault and a battery is a battery. In every jurisdiction in the United States these common-law torts are actionable, civilly and criminally. One is not privileged to strike the landlord, the policeman, or the professor except in self defense. If one disagrees with an opponent he should seek legal redress-except in labor disputes. The mystique of labor law is that strike violence is an aberration so strange and perplexing that ordinary standards of assault and battery simply will not do. The theory seems to be that, since violence is a traditional part of labor disputes, tradition sanctions its use. This tA.B., Harvard, 1952; LL.B., Virginia, 1957. Associate, Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, Cincinnati. * B.A., Michigan State, 1960; LL.B., Harvard, 1963. Associate, Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, Cincinnati. We thank J. Mack Swigert W. Bruce Baird, W. K. Engeman, and H. F. McCann for their patience in reading this manuscript and for their helpful suggestions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Steel Strike of 1959 and the Anatomy of the New Deal Order
    Conflict and Consensus: The Steel Strike of 1959 and the Anatomy of the New Deal Order Kristoffer Smemo, University of California, Santa Barbara Samir Sonti, University of California, Santa Barbara Gabriel Winant, Yale University ABSTRACT This article places the 1959 steel strike—the largest work stoppage in US history— within the trajectory of the New Deal order. We provide a multiscalar account of the strike that stretches from the mills and corporate boardrooms, to Congress and the Oval Office, and back to the homes of steelworkers themselves. The strike crys- tallized the limits of postwar collective bargaining and Keynesian policy making to manage postwar economic growth. Those limitations allowed steelworkers to lay claim to the New Deal’s promise of industrial citizenship and defend the moral econ- omy of their home life—but only for a brief time. Therefore, unpacking the steel strike along these lines recasts the entire New Deal order as a complex formation composed of multiple layers of social activity, each powered by its own internal dynamics, and each in contradictory relation to the others. hey handed us an issue,” United Steelworkers of America (USWA) Pres- ident David McDonald remarked in early January 1960. Days earlier, his T union and steel industry representatives, with a little help from Vice Presi- dent Richard Nixon, had reached an agreement to end what by then had become the largest strike in the history of the United States. “Icouldn’t have written the script We greatly appreciate the encouragement and counsel of Heather Berg, Michael Denning, Jennifer Klein, Nelson Lichtenstein, Joesph McCartin, Jack Metzgar, David Stebenne, Judith Stein, and the engaged au- dience at our panel for the Washington, DC, meeting of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.
    [Show full text]
  • Strikes and the Reagan Labor Law Project
    CHAPTER SIX: STRIKES AND THE REAGAN LABOR LAW PROJECT- THREE CASE STUDIES Introduction In this chapter I examine three union strikes that occurred in the United States during the latter part of the 1980s. I specifically assess the degree to which labor law policies and practices of the Reagan administration influenced the outcomes of these industrial conflicts. As I discussed in Chapter Three, the strikes selected for analysis are: the 1986-87 dispute between the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) and the USX Corporation (formerly United States Steel); the 1987 strike between the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and John Morrell & Co.; and the 1989-90 conflict between the United Mine Workers 278 of America (UMWA) and the Pittston Coal Group.185 As with the previous chapter, I will present a chronological overview of each dispute, followed by a more detailed analysis of the role of collective labor law. The concluding discussion sections for each dispute serve to preview Chapter Seven, which places both the British and American cases in a broader comparative context. The 1986-87 Steel Strike/Lockout: A Battle Among the Ruins Overview As the United States steel industry slid down the slippery slope of industrial decline during the 1980s, the adversarialism that had long marked labor-management relations in this economic sector intensified. Each side held the other responsible for the industry's diminishing global stature and its domestic misfortunes, with the United Steel Workers of 185 While this latter strike technically took place during the early years of the Bush administration, I contend that the Reagan administration's labor law regime was effectively still in operation at the time of this dispute.
    [Show full text]
  • Protecting the Public Interest in Labor Disputes
    Michigan Law Review Volume 58 Issue 6 1960 Protecting the Public Interest in Labor Disputes Frank E. Cooper University of Michigan Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr Part of the Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons, and the Labor and Employment Law Commons Recommended Citation Frank E. Cooper, Protecting the Public Interest in Labor Disputes, 58 MICH. L. REV. 873 (1960). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol58/iss6/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Law Review at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PROTECTING THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN LABOR DISPUTES Frank E. Cooper* HERE exists gt;:neral agreement that an effective means must be found, in the public interest, to curb strikes in basic industriesT that imperil the national health or safety. This prin­ ciple, indeed, has been a part of our basic law for more than a decade. The trouble has been that the limited means provided to meet this need fail to give effective expression to the public in­ terest. The only significant remedy is that which the steel strike has made so well known: an 80-day injunction followed by an elec­ tion in which the employees may indicate for publicity purposes whether they wish to accept the employer's last offer rather than continue the strike.
    [Show full text]