University of Massachusetts Amherst From the SelectedWorks of Dan Clawson 2012 Labor in Struggle Dan Clawson, University of Massachusetts - Amherst Available at: https://works.bepress.com/dan_clawson/15/ Critical-Retrospective Essays 747 References Merrill, Francis E. and Carroll D. Clark. 1934. Gideonse, Harry D. 1934. ‘‘Money and Finance,’’ ‘‘The Money Market as a Special Public,’’ American Journal of Sociology 39(6): 749–758. American Journal of Sociology 39(5): 626–636. MacKenzie, Donald. 2011. ‘‘The Credit Crisis as Merrill, Francis E. and Melchior Palyi. 1938. ‘‘The a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge,’’ Stock Exchange and Social Control,’’ American American Journal of Sociology 116(6): 1778–1841. Journal of Sociology 43(4): 560–577. Labor in Struggle DAN CLAWSON University of Massachusetts [email protected] Reviving the Strike: How Working People Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Can Regain Power and Transform America, Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that by Joe Burns. Brooklyn, NY: Ig Changed America , by Joseph A. Publishing, 2011. 206pp. $15.95 paper. McCartin. New York, NY: Oxford ISBN: 9781935439240. University Press, 2011. 472pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780199836789. Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the United States , by Jennifer Jihye Chun. Future of the U.S. Labor Movement , by Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2009. 221pp. Ruth Milkman. New York, NY: Russell $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780801447112. Sage Foundation, 2006. 244pp. $24.95 paper. ISBN 9780871546357. The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements , by Dan Clawson. The Broken Table: The Detroit Newspaper Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2003. 235pp. Strike and the State of American Labor , by $21.95 paper. ISBN: 9780801488702. Chris Rhomberg. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012. 387pp. The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New $47.50 paper. ISBN: 9780871547170. Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? , by Steve Early. Chicago, IL: Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Haymarket Books, 2011. 409pp. $17.00 Rights, and Transnational Activism , by paper. ISBN: 9781608460991. Gay Seidman. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. 176pp. $18.95 Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, paper. ISBN: 9780871547613. Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement , by Marshall Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Ganz. New York, NY: Oxford Globalization since 1870 , by Beverly J. University Press, 2009. 344pp. $34.95 Silver. New York, NY: Cambridge cloth. ISBN: 9780195162011. University Press, 2003. 238pp. $31.00 paper. ISBN: 97805215207795. Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement , by Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Steven Henry Lopez. Berkeley, CA: Unions and Social Change , by Amanda University of California Press, 2004. Tattersall. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 2010. 292pp. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520235656. 209pp. $21.00 paper. ISBN: 9780801476068. Raising Expectations: How American Workers Can Win (And Why They Don’t) , by Jane McAlevey , with Bob Ostertag. New York, NY: Verso, forthcoming 2012. Contemporary Sociology 41, 6 Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 748 Critical-Retrospective Essays The editor gave me a very general charge: struggles within labor over what kind of choose a dozen books on labor, published union to aim for and how to get there. In in the new millennium, and write about some sense underlying all this, but until them. Since I can name perhaps three dozen recently largely absent from consideration, books I would like to include, a selection cri- has been the disappearance of strikes. terion is key. In most circumstances, for sociologists as well as others, the term ‘‘labor’’ evokes first Pure Organizing or Structural and foremost the labor process, the work Conditions? people do, whether that be carework, assem- For perhaps twenty years beginning around bly line production, professional careers, or 1990, the U.S. labor movement’s analysis of housework. But in this essay ‘‘labor,’’ as I the key to victory was organizing enough use the term, focuses on work-related workers to achieve a high level of ‘‘union groups that seek to transform society, in big density,’’ the proportion of all workers who or small ways, by bringing people together, were members of unions. There is good rea- developing their capacities, and using the son for a focus on density: studies show that solidarity of many individuals, each of if only one in ten workers in a sector are them weak if standing alone, to mobilize organized, then the union cannot win power and contest existing arrangements. much, or if it does win, the employer will This essay covers only books that fit that cri- constantly be at war with the union and terion, and by no means all of those works. looking for ways to move the operation or The confusion between these two senses outsource key components. On the other of labor is sometimes helpful, sometimes hand, if ninety percent of a sector is orga- a problem. At my home institution, the Uni- nized, not only do employers find it more versity of Massachusetts Amherst, the hith- difficult to displace the union, but also paying erto free-standing Labor Center was forced decent wages and benefits is just a cost of to merge with a department, and it chose doing business, and is no longer a competitive sociology. I very much hope that when the disadvantage. As a result, unions can do the chancellor or provost hears ‘‘labor center’’ most to improve conditions, and are in the they subliminally think it is about work most secure position, if they can achieve tout cours . The problem however, is that high density within a particular sector. 2 (The many of my colleagues subliminally think relevant sector for leverage might be down- the same way, and would be happy to have town hotels in San Francisco; workers and the Labor Center be a site for the study of the union would not need ninety percent work conditions, of the ways work is orga- density for hotels in the nation as a whole.) nized and changes, the workplace as a site During the last two decades studies of to study a range of issues. Such people— organizing were central to labor scholarship and I suspect it is not just my colleagues, as well as to the labor movement. The AFL- but many members of the ASA Labor and CIO itself sponsored three edited volumes Labor Movements section—want to see (not reviewed here) and each focused on a sympathy-for-the-victims standpoint. But organizing. Within that larger focus, some they have trouble understanding why I and scholarship focused on exemplary cases others jealously guard the special character and on principles that would apply to of a Labor Center as a site to focus on the vari- more-or-less any organizing at any time, ety of ways workers and their supporters while other scholarship emphasized the organize for transformation (whether or not importance of structural conditions, with they do so through a traditional union), of the ways people stop being (just) victims 2 See Laura Dresser and Annette Bernhardt. and assume agency in collective struggle. 2006. ‘‘Bad Service Jobs: Can Unions Save This essay looks at some of the ways that Them? Can They Save Unions?’’ Pp. 115–37 scholarship has changed in recent years, in R. Block, S. Friedman, M. Kaminski and A. Levin, eds., Justice on the Job: Perspectives on from a focus on what (if anything) can be the Erosion of Collective Bargaining in the United done to improve traditional union organiz- States . Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute ing, to alternative ways to exercise power, to for Employment Research. Contemporary Sociology 41, 6 Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at UNIV MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST on February 18, 2013 Critical-Retrospective Essays 749 the implicit or explicit argument that not all draws on an impressive database that aims things were possible at all times. In the to cover all strikes and labor activity from 1990s, work by Kate Bronfenbrenner (some 1870 through the 1990s to argue that what of it with Tom Juravich), using a pure- is possible is structurally determined. Labor organizing approach, had a major impact unrest is greatest during periods of capital on (some parts of) the labor movement. inflow. The characteristic form of struggle Quantitative studies of a sample of organiz- varies by the structure of the industry. Con- ing campaigns showed that no single tactic sider the auto industry: unrest shifts from was a magic bullet, but campaigns were far the United States and Canada in the 1930s, more likely to succeed if they employed to Western Europe in the 1960s, to Italy, a range of rank-and-file intensive tactics. Spain, and Argentina in the 1970s, to Brazil, Even if there were no changes in labor law, South Africa, South Korea, and Mexico in globalization, or politics, labor could sub- the 1990s (and we might add, to China stantially increase its victories if it ran the today). Each country’s struggle is unique— right kind of campaigns. 3 but in country after country, due to the Why David Sometimes Wins by Marshall tightly-linked character of auto production, Ganz provides another example of a focus the union is brought in through action by on pure organizing, using the 1960s Farm- a militant minority at a choke point in the workers, a union in which Ganz was a key system. Those tactics work in auto, and are participant, to develop a general theory of independently invented again and again, organizing. Ganz argues that the Farm- but they would not work in textiles. That workers succeeded in significant part is, the success of worker struggles does not because their leadership devised a stream just depend on injustice, or even worker mil- of effective strategy, strategy which came itance, but in a significant part on strategic from relying on a leadership team, and position and the ability to exert leverage.